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Goose, to Boil
Pick and singe a goose carefully. Let it soak in lukewarm milk and water for eight or ten hours. Stuff, and truss it securely: put it into a saucepan, with as much cold water as will cover it, bring it to a boil, and let it simmer gently until done enough. Send good onion sauce to table with it. Time, from an hour and a half to two hours after it has boiled. Probable cost of goose, 6s. Sufficient for eight or ten persons. (See also GOOSE, BOILED.)
A Victorian method for an older, tougher bird, where long gentle poaching does what roasting cannot. Most of what needs translating is the soak, the stuffing and the timing.
- The milk-and-water soakEight to ten hours in lukewarm milk and water was meant to whiten and sweeten the flesh of a bird that had been hanging. Do it in the refrigerator rather than at room temperature; milk held lukewarm for ten hours is an excellent bacterial medium, and the point of the soak is mildness, not warmth.
- SingeingGoose skin keeps stubborn pin feathers and down that plucking misses. Pass the dry bird briefly over a gas flame or use a kitchen torch, then wipe with a cloth. Supermarket geese are usually already well cleaned and need only a check around the wing joints and vent.
- Stuffing a boiled birdStuffing inside a simmered goose heats slowly and unevenly. Cook the stuffing separately in a dish, or fill the cavity only loosely and check that its centre reaches 74C/165F along with the bird.
- Timing and donenessThe recipe gives an hour and a half to two hours after the water has come to the boil, which would suit a large bird, perhaps in the region of 4-5 kg (9-11 lb), though no weight is given. Judge by a thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh, clear of bone: 74C/165F. A leg that moves freely in its socket is the older test.
- Keep it at a bare simmerThis is the hinge. Water at a rolling boil shreds the breast and toughens the leg meat while the inside is still cold. Bring it up, skim the scum, then hold the pot just trembling.
- Season the waterThe original says nothing about it, calling only for cold water. Salt the water and add an onion, a carrot, a few peppercorns and a bay leaf; the goose gives up a great deal of flavour to the liquid otherwise.
- The cooking liquorYou will be left with a very fatty, well-flavoured broth. Chill it, lift off the solid fat for roasting potatoes, and keep the stock for soup or for the onion sauce itself.
- Onion sauceThe period sauce is boiled onions, chopped or sieved, folded into a white sauce made with milk or with some of the goose liquor, seasoned with salt, pepper and a little mace or nutmeg. It is not optional here; boiled goose is plain without it.
- Cost and yieldSix shillings was a substantial outlay for a household of the 1870s-90s. Eight to ten servings is realistic for a large bird, though goose carves less generously than its size suggests.
Boiling a goose looks odd to modern readers who know only the roast Michaelmas bird, but it was one recognised treatment for an older bird or a stubble goose that had run too long. Roasting rewards a young, fat bird; simmering rescues an older one, softening the connective tissue that dry heat only tightens, and drawing off some of the formidable fat into the pot. The long soak in milk and water belongs to the same era's habit of whitening poultry and veal before cooking, when birds were bought whole from a poulterer and had often hung for days. Onion sauce is a common accompaniment in English cookery books of the period, appearing beside boiled goose, boiled rabbit and boiled mutton alike; the sharp sweetness of onions cooked in milk was held to answer the richness of the meat. Cassell's habit of giving a probable cost alongside the method is a reminder that its readership was as much household managers as cooks.