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Devilled Goose
Plunge the goose into a pot of boiling water and let it remain half an hour. Fill with a stuffing made of:
Mashed Irish potatoes, a heaping tablespoonful butter, minced onions, sage, parsley and thyme, half a teaspoonful black pepper.
Place it in a pan with a slice of fat pork and a pint of broth or liquor in which any kind of meat has been boiled.
Mix two tablespoonfuls pepper vinegar, celery vinegar, made mustard, and one of acid fruit jelly. Butter the breast of the goose and pour this mixture over it, adding salt and pepper to the taste.
Place in a hot oven, dredge with flour and baste frequently till done; when serve with its own gravy. This receipt will answer equally as well for wild goose.--Mrs. S. T.
A roast goose dressed with a sharp, sweet-sour basting sauce, in the older sense of "devilled" — meaning heavily seasoned with mustard, vinegar and pepper rather than grilled. Most of the work here is managing the bird's fat and the vagueness of the quantities.
- The half-hour boil is the hingeThe half-hour boil -- Plunging the goose into boiling water will render off some of the thick subcutaneous fat and firm the skin; period cooks also used a preliminary boil to temper strong-flavoured birds. The receipt gives no reason. Dry the bird thoroughly before stuffing or the flour dredge will turn to paste.
- "Hot oven"Read this as 425-450F. With a bird this fatty it is worth dropping to 325-350F after the first 30 minutes, or the drippings will scorch in the pan and sour the gravy.
- Irish potatoesOrdinary white potatoes. Nineteenth-century Southern books say "Irish" to distinguish them from sweet potatoes, which were the default "potato" in Virginia.
- Fat pork and made mustardFat pork is salt pork or fatback, laid over or under the bird for extra basting fat. "Made mustard" is prepared mustard — mixed and ready — not dry powder.
- The vinegarsPepper vinegar and celery vinegar were household flavoured vinegars, hot peppers or celery (seed or stalk) steeped in vinegar for anything from a few days to several weeks. Cider vinegar with a few drops of hot sauce, and cider vinegar with celery seed, stand in closely.
- Acid fruit jellyCurrant, crabapple or damson — something tart, not grape jam. Its job is to balance the mustard and vinegar, so a sweet jelly will throw the sauce off.
- Unstated quantitiesThe stuffing gives no amounts for potatoes, onions or herbs. For a 9-10 lb goose, figure roughly 6 cups mashed potato, one large onion and a tablespoon each of the herbs; the recipe expects a cook who fills the cavity by eye.
- DonenessThigh meat at 170-175F, which suits dark goose meat better than the 165F minimum. Total roasting time after the boil runs about 2 to 2 1/2 hours for a 10 lb bird.
- Wild goose is a different animalThe note at the end is optimistic. A wild goose carries almost none of the fat that keeps a domestic one moist, so it needs the pork fat, the broth in the pan and constant basting, and it will be dry if taken much past medium.
- YieldA domestic goose of 9-10 lb serves perhaps four to six, less generously than its weight suggests — the frame is large and the fat loss considerable.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1877, gathers receipts contributed by named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one ends with "Mrs. S. T." rather than a measurement. "Devilled" in this period meant simply seasoned to bite — mustard, cayenne, vinegar — and was applied to bones, kidneys, crab and, as here, whole roast birds. Goose had a familiar place on the Anglo-Virginian autumn and Christmas table, and the sweet-sour basting of vinegar and tart jelly is often traced to English practice, where goose was commonly served against something acid to cut the fat. The casual aside that the receipt "will answer equally as well for wild goose" is a reminder that wild geese were ordinary market and hunting game in the Tidewater, and that a household cook was expected to move between wild and domestic birds without much fuss.