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Goose Stuffing, Potato
Take two pounds of good sound potatoes, peel and wash them, and cut them into small pieces, with an onion, finely minced. Put them into a stewpan, with a piece of butter the size of a walnut. Cover the pan closely, and shake it about, that the potatoes may not stick to the bottom, and when they are partly cooked, out not tender, mix with them the liver of the goose, chopped small. Strew over them a tea-spoonful of powdered sage, a salt-spoonful of salt, and half a salt-spoonful of pepper. Put the stuffing inside the goose, tie the openings securely, and roast. If preferred, the potatoes may be mashed, instead of being cooked as above. Time, five or six minutes to steam the potatoes. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient to stuff a goose.
A potato-and-liver stuffing for a roast goose, written when the bird's giblets came attached. The method is a covered steam-fry rather than a boil, and the potatoes are meant to finish cooking inside the goose.
- The hinge: undercook the potatoesThe potatoes go in "partly cooked, not tender" because they will absorb goose fat and finish in the cavity over a long roast. Cook them soft on the stove and the stuffing turns to paste.
- Five or six minutes is optimisticTwo pounds of diced potato in a covered pan with a walnut of butter will need 10-15 minutes over low heat, with frequent shaking, to reach the half-done stage. Cut the dice small and even, around half an inch.
- Old measuresA salt-spoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoning is roughly 1/4 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp pepper for two pounds of potato. That is very light by current taste; season to your own palate, remembering the goose fat will carry it.
- A walnut of butterSomewhere around one to two tablespoons (15-30 g); the old measure is not exact. It is enough only because the pan is tightly covered and the potatoes steam in their own moisture.
- The goose liverModern geese are usually sold with the giblet bag inside; if yours has none, ask the butcher or substitute two or three chicken livers. Trim any green-stained tissue, which is bile and bitter.
- Powdered sageThis means dried sage, not fresh. A teaspoon of dried sage is roughly a tablespoon of chopped fresh leaves if that is what you have.
- Stuffing the bird safelyPack loosely and check that the centre of the stuffing reaches 165F/74C before serving, since it contains raw liver. Many cooks now bake the stuffing in a dish alongside and spoon goose fat over it, which gives the same result with less risk of a bird that is overdone at the breast.
- YieldTwo pounds of potato is enough to fill a goose, as the recipe says. "Probable cost, 8d." is the Victorian price for the stuffing alone.
Potato stuffing for goose is one of several traditions in which the bird's own fat is the point of the dish: the stuffing absorbs it and helps stretch a rich, expensive roast across more plates. Cassell's gives sage and onion as the flavour base, which was already a standard English seasoning for goose and pork by the eighteenth century, sage being traditionally thought to counter fattiness. The inclusion of the liver is thrift from a period when poultry arrived whole with the giblets attached, and the alternative offered at the end -- mashed potato instead of steamed dice -- suggests the book recording two ways a cook might do it rather than prescribing one.