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GOOSE PUDDING, OR SAVOURY PUDDING (a Yorkshire recipe)
Pour as much boiling milk over a pound of stale bread as will just cover it. Let it soak until soft, then beat it with a fork, and take out any lumps that will not soften. Add six ounces of beef suet, finely shredded, four large onions, boiled and chopped, a dessert-spoonful of powdered sage, and the same of marjoram and thyme, a dessert-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of pepper, a dessert-spoonful of oat-meal, and three eggs well beaten. Spread the mixture in a buttered or greased dripping-tin, about three-quarters of an inch in thickness. Put it in the oven for half an hour, to cook the under-part, then place it under the goose, before the fire, and let the gravy drip on it. It must be well browned in every part. Cut it into squares, and serve it at the same time as the goose. This pudding may also be served with roast pork. Time, an hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A dripping-pan stuffing baked alongside the bird rather than inside it, which means it browns on all sides and cooks through with none of the food-safety trouble of a stuffed cavity. The whole point is the goose fat that falls on it, so the awkward part is reproducing that without an open fire.
- The hinge: catch the fatThe pudding is bland without goose drippings soaking into the top. In an oven, set the tin on a lower shelf directly beneath the roasting rack for the last 40-50 minutes, or spoon hot fat from the roasting tin over the surface two or three times. Baking it dry and serving it alongside gives a different, duller dish.
- Oven heatBake the initial half hour at about 375F/190C, then finish under the goose at whatever the roast requires (usually 325-350F). It wants to be firm enough to cut in squares and browned, not soft.
- Dessert-spoonfulA Victorian dessertspoon is about 2 teaspoons, roughly 10 ml. So around 2 tsp each of dried sage, marjoram, thyme, salt and oatmeal, and 1 tsp pepper. Two teaspoons of salt for a pound of bread is right for something eaten in small squares with rich meat.
- BreadA pound of genuinely stale, close-crumbed white bread, weighed with crusts. Modern soft sandwich loaves collapse to paste; a day-old sourdough or a firm white tin loaf torn into pieces is closer. Use just enough boiling milk to cover, and drain nothing away.
- SuetSix ounces of beef suet, finely shredded, is the fat that keeps the crumb open. Packaged shredded suet works; if using fresh suet from a butcher, chill it hard and grate it. Butter can stand in but the texture goes denser.
- OnionsFour large onions boiled first, then chopped, gives sweetness without raw bite. Simmer them whole 20-25 minutes, drain well and squeeze out water before chopping, or the pudding will be wet.
- Powdered sage"Powdered sage" of the period was dried leaf ground fine, stronger by volume than today's rubbed sage. If your sage is rubbed rather than ground, use it generously; if ground, start at half and taste the raw mixture.
- Tin and thicknessThree-quarters of an inch is deliberate: thin enough to cook through and brown on the underside. A quarter-sheet or medium roasting tin, well greased, suits the quantity.
- Yield and timingThe book's hour and a half is total oven time including the spell under the bird. Six to eight portions, cut in squares, as an accompaniment to goose or roast pork.
Savoury pudding of this kind belongs to the Yorkshire tradition of cooking batters and bread mixtures in the dripping-pan under roasting meat, the same logic that produced Yorkshire pudding itself: the fat falling from the joint was too valuable to waste, and a cheap starch stretched an expensive bird across a large table. Goose was a set-piece bird for Michaelmas and Christmas in northern England, rich enough that a sage-and-onion stuffing baked separately in squares suited it better than a packed cavity. The oatmeal is often said to be a northern touch, a small amount used to bind and firm rather than to flavour. The costing of 1s. 3d. for six to eight people marks it as the frugal half of the meal, and the note that it will also serve with roast pork reflects the household reality that the same dripping-pan trick worked under any fatty joint.