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To Roast Goose
A goose must never be eaten the same day it is killed. If the weather is cold, it should be kept a week before using. Before cooking let it lie several hours in weak salt and water, to remove the strong taste. Then plunge it in boiling water, for five minutes, if old. Fill the goose with a dressing made of: Mealy Irish potatoes, boiled and mashed fine. A small lump of butter. A little salt or fresh pork chopped fine. A little minced onion. Parsley, thyme, and a pinch of chopped or powdered sage.
Grease with sweet lard or butter. Lay in a pan with the giblets, neck, etc. Pour in two teacups of boiling water, set in a hot oven, and baste frequently. Turn so that every part may be equally browned. Serve with gravy or onion sauce.
The above recipe will answer equally as well for duck.--Mrs. S. T.
A straightforward roast bird with a potato stuffing, written for a farm goose that arrived whole and unplucked. Most of what needs translating is the handling before it reaches the oven.
- Skip the week of hangingThe instruction to keep the bird a week in cold weather assumes an unheated larder in winter and a bird killed that morning. A goose bought today has already been aged and chilled under refrigeration; take it straight from the fridge to the brine or the pan.
- The salt-and-water soak"Weak salt and water" for several hours is a light brine, meant to draw out the strong flavor of an older bird. Roughly 1/4 cup salt per gallon of water is in the right range, and it does nothing but good for a modern goose either. Keep it refrigerated while it soaks.
- Blanching an old birdThe five-minute plunge in boiling water was reserved for a tough old goose. It also tightens and dries the skin, which helps it crisp. With a young commercial goose it is optional; a pricked skin and a hot start does the same work.
- "A hot oven"On a wood or coal range this meant a brisk oven, which modern conversions usually put somewhere in the 400-450F range. Start the goose there for about 30 minutes, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder. A 10 lb goose needs roughly 2 1/2 to 3 hours total, to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh.
- FatThe recipe says to grease the bird, which a goose emphatically does not need. Prick the skin over the breast and thighs and pour or ladle off the rendered fat as it collects, or the two teacups of water in the pan will turn into a spitting fat bath. Save the fat; it is the best thing you will get out of the bird after the meat.
- The stuffing"Mealy Irish potatoes" are plain floury white potatoes -- russets or similar -- as distinct from sweet potatoes. "A little salt or fresh pork chopped fine" is ambiguous: it most likely offers a choice between salt pork and fresh pork, finely chopped, though it can also be read as a little salt, or else chopped fresh pork. If you pack this into the cavity, the stuffing must also reach 165F, which usually overcooks the breast; baking it alongside in a dish is the more reliable course.
- Teacups and sweet lardNineteenth-century teacup measures vary, running somewhere between about 1/2 and 3/4 cup, so two teacups is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups of boiling water in the pan. "Sweet lard" simply means fresh, unsalted, unrancid lard.
- Yield and the gravyA goose gives far less meat for its weight than a chicken; a 10 lb bird will serve about four to six. The giblets and neck roasting in the pan are the base of the gravy -- strain the pan juices, skim the fat hard, and thicken.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and first published in 1878, was assembled from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housewives, which is why this one closes with "Mrs. S. T." rather than a page reference. Goose was a bird of the household yard rather than the market: fattened through the autumn, killed in cold weather, and hung, which is what the opening line about never eating it the day it is killed refers to. The potato stuffing, rather than the bread-and-sage or apple mixtures more common in English cookery of the same era, reflects both the ubiquity of the potato in nineteenth-century American kitchens and the practical fact that a starchy filling absorbs the fat a goose renders. Sage with goose is long established in English cooking, and it survives here as no more than "a pinch." The note that the method serves equally for duck is the kind of economy that runs through the whole book -- one technique, applied to whatever fat waterfowl the place happened to produce.