Home › The Principles of Cookery › Goose Stuffing, Apple
Goose Stuffing, Apple
Pare, core, and cut into small pieces some good baking apples. Fill the goose as full as it will hold with these, fasten the openings securely, and roast. When this stuffing is used, apple sauce may be dispensed with. In Germany, a few almonds, blanched and sliced, or a few currants, are sometimes mixed with the apples.
A stuffing of nothing but raw apple, relying on the fruit to absorb fat and perfume the bird from the inside. It works, but a few things want spelling out.
- Which apples"Good baking apples" means a cooking variety with enough acid to stand up to goose fat. A Bramley will break down towards a purée; Granny Smith or Northern Spy hold their pieces better. Sweeter dessert apples give a blander, wetter result and lose the point of the dish, which is acid against goose fat.
- QuantityA 10–12 lb goose will take roughly 2½–3 lb of apples, peeled and cut into rough inch pieces. "As full as it will hold" is literal here, but pack firmly rather than ramming — the apples give up a great deal of juice as they cook.
- The stuffing is a flavouring, not a side dishApples packed in a goose come out soft, greasy and heavily perfumed with the bird. They can be spooned out, mashed with a little of the pan juices and served as the sauce, which may be what lies behind the recipe's remark that apple sauce may be dispensed with, though the text does not say so.
- Fastening the openingsSkewers and kitchen string at the vent, and the neck skin folded under and pinned. A goose renders enormous quantities of fat and the cavity contents will try to escape; a loose bird floods the tin.
- Roasting the gooseThe book assumes you know the method. Prick the skin all over, start at 425F for 30 minutes, then drop to 325F and allow roughly 15 minutes per pound, pouring off the rendered fat two or three times. The thigh should read 170F, and the apple filling should reach at least 165F.
- The German variationsBlanched sliced almonds or dried currants, stirred through the apples before filling; the recipe specifies only "a few". Prunes appear in related northern European goose stuffings and behave much the same way.
- ServingA 10–12 lb goose feeds six to eight, less generously than the weight suggests, since the carcass is heavy and the meat yield low. Save the poured-off fat; it keeps for months refrigerated.
Goose and apple is a long-established pairing in northern European cooking, and the logic is agricultural before it is culinary: geese were killed in autumn, at Michaelmas or around Martinmas, exactly when the apple harvest was in. The fruit's acid cuts a bird that is extraordinarily fatty, which is why Cassell's can say the separate apple sauce becomes unnecessary he sose is being made inside the goose. The German note is accurate to the tradition; G sebraten stuffed with apples, and often prunes, chestnuts or dried fruit, remains a Christmas dish across German-speaking Europe. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a vast compendium usually dated to around the turn of the century, files this among several goose stuffings emovremovremoved":"Replaced 'one of the oldest fixed pairings' superlative with 'long-established'; changed 'late-Victorian' to 'usually dated to around the turn of the century'; deleted the speculative claim about the period's editorial motive."}