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Goose, Boiled
Pick and singe a goose, and truss it securely. It may be stuffed, if liked, as for roasting. Put it on in hot water or stock, bring to the boil, and skim well, then cook very gently until done, which will be in one and a half or two hours, according to size and age. Serve good onion sauce with it. (See also GOOSE, To BOIL.)
A boiled goose is a lean, gently poached bird rather than a roast, and the method rewards restraint: the water must never do more than tremble. A few points bring the Victorian instructions in line with a modern kitchen.
- Never let it boilBring to the boil, skim, then drop the heat until the surface only shivers, around 180-185F. A rolling boil tightens the leg muscles of a goose badly and shreds the breast.
- Picking and singeingA supermarket goose arrives plucked; you may still find pinfeathers and down at the wing joints and vent. Pull them with tweezers and pass the skin briefly over a gas flame or use a kitchen torch to burn off the hair.
- Judge by temperature, not the clockThe recipe itself hedges, "according to size and age," and gives no weight. Goose sizes vary widely, so test the thickest part of the thigh for 165F rather than trusting the range given.
- The stuffing is the weak pointStuffing set inside a poached bird heats slowly and unevenly. If you stuff it, the center of the stuffing must also reach 165F; cooking it separately in a dish is more reliable and does not overcook the goose while you wait.
- Vessel and liquidYou need a stockpot or oval braiser large enough to hold the bird covered by liquid, which for a typical goose means 12 quarts or more. The recipe allows either water or stock; stock will give the richer result, and what remains is an excellent, if fatty, base for soup.
- Skim, and skim againGoose renders a great deal of fat. Skim during cooking, then chill the strained liquid and lift the solid cap off; that fat is worth keeping for potatoes.
- Onion sauceThe period sauce is onions boiled soft, chopped or sieved, and stirred into a white sauce or melted butter, often with milk or a little cream and sometimes seasoned with mace. It is not a gravy, and it is the point of the dish rather than a garnish.
- YieldAn 8-10 lb goose carves for six to eight; the carcass yields comparatively little meat for its weight.
Boiling was a common treatment for an older or tougher goose, the bird past its first season that would have been stringy under the roasting jack. English cookery kept a firm distinction between the green goose of early summer, killed young and roasted, and the stubble goose fattened on the gleanings after harvest and eaten at Michaelmas; the older, harder-worked bird suited slow moist cooking. Onion sauce is often the partner in nineteenth-century English books, as it is with boiled mutton and with rabbit, its sweetness cutting the richness of the fat. The cross-reference to a second entry, "Goose, To Boil," is characteristic of the dictionary format: the book was arranged for looking things up rather than reading through, and the same dish often appears in more than one place with slightly different wording.