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Apple Sauce for Roast Goose
Pare, core, and slice four or five large apples; place them in a saucepan with only just enough water to keep them from burning. Let them simmer gently, stirring frequently, over a slow fire, until they are reduced to pulp. Turn them into a bowl, and beat them well with one tea-spoonful of sugar, the squeeze of a lemon, and a small piece of butter. Time, half an hour to simmer. Sufficient for a small goose. Probable cost, 4d.
A plain apple sauce with almost no sugar, meant as a sharp foil to fatty roast goose rather than a sweet compote. The whole trick is the water.
- "Only just enough water"Two to three tablespoons for four or five apples, no more. The apples release their own juice as they collapse; extra water gives you a thin, washed-out puree that slides off the meat.
- Apple choiceThe recipe simply says "large apples," and any tart cooker that falls to fluff works: Bramley, Grenadier or similar. Granny Smith holds its shape and needs mashing or a longer sitting over the heat. Eating apples such as Gala will need less sugar still and give a looser sauce.
- "A slow fire"The lowest steady heat you have, with the pan checked often; the recipe asks for frequent stirring. On a modern hob use a heavy-based pan on the smallest burner; thin pans scorch the bottom layer before the top has softened.
- Half an hourGenerous by today's standards. Peeled, sliced cookers are usually pulp in 15 to 20 minutes; go by the apples rather than the clock.
- The seasoning goes in off the heatSugar, lemon and butter are beaten in after the apples come off, which keeps the sauce fresh-tasting and glossy. One teaspoon of sugar is deliberately austere for a rich bird -- taste and add more only if the apples are very sour.
- "A small piece of butter"About 15 g, half an ounce. It smooths the texture and stops the sauce tasting purely acidic.
- YieldThe recipe reckons this "sufficient for a small goose." Four or five large apples make a generous bowlful; scale up for a larger bird.
- Probable cost, 4d.The costings throughout Cassell's are late-Victorian household prices and are of historical interest only.
Apple sauce with goose and with pork is one of the oldest surviving English pairings of fruit and fat, and the logic is straightforward: acid cuts grease. Sharp fruit sauces for roast birds, sometimes sharpened further with verjuice or vinegar, appear in English cookery long before sugar was cheap, and the sparing single teaspoon here belongs to that sourer tradition rather than to the modern dessert puree. Goose was a seasonal bird in Victorian Britain, associated with Michaelmas at the end of September and with Christmas, which is also when the year's cooking apples were newly in store -- the pairing was as much a matter of the calendar as of taste.