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Goose Deviled En Casserole
I goose Potato stuffing 4 tablespoonfuls vinegar 1 tablespoonful white pepper 2 tablespoonfuls made mustard After cleaning the goose and wiping it well with a damp cloth, plunge it into a saucepan of boiling water, and boil gently for one hour. Take it from the saucepan, drain well, and wipe it very dry. Fill the body and neck with potato stuffing, truss and sew up, lay it in an earthenware pan, and roast in a very hot oven, allowing twenty minutes to every pound. Mix the vinegar, pepper, and mustard together, pour them over the goose, and baste it frequently.
An old goose that can be cooked in no other way may be so dressed, two hours being allowed for the boiling instead of one hour.
To make the potato stuffing: Cook one chopped onion in a quarter of a cupful of salt pork cubes until brown, then add two cupfuls of hot mashed potatoes, salt and pepper to taste, half a teaspoonful of poultry seasoning, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley, and one cupful of cooked sausages cut in pieces. Mix thoroughly, then stuff the goose with the mixture.
A two-stage method: the goose is boiled to render fat and tenderize, then roasted hard under a mustard-vinegar coat. The parboiling is the hinge — skip it and you get a greasy bird with a slack skin.
- "Very hot oven"In modern terms somewhere around 450F or above. At that heat the mustard glaze sets and the skin crisps quickly, which is the whole point of the second stage.
- The timing needs cuttingTwenty minutes per pound after an hour of boiling would give a 10-lb goose more than four hours of total cooking. A parboiled goose needs roughly 12–15 minutes per pound at 450F, or until the thigh reaches 170–175F; the meat is already most of the way there when it goes in.
- "Made mustard"Prepared mustard from a jar, not dry powder. An English-style hot mustard suits the word "deviled" better than a mild yellow one.
- A tablespoon of white pepperThat is a very aggressive amount by current taste, even spread over a whole goose. A teaspoon or two gives the same heat without burying the bird; scale up if you want the full period effect.
- "Earthenware pan"The 'casserole' of the title appears to mean the vessel rather than the dish; any deep earthenware or heavy roasting pan works. Choose one with sides high enough to hold the fat that will render out, and spoon it off as you baste or the glaze will thin and slide.
- Save the boiling water and the fatThe cooking liquid is good goose stock once chilled and skimmed, and the rendered fat is worth keeping for potatoes. Both are the real dividend of parboiling.
- The stuffing is already cookedMashed potato, browned salt pork, onion and cooked sausage go in warm and only need to heat through. Because it is a dense, moist filling, stuffing it loosely — or baking it alongside in a separate dish — gives better results than packing the cavity tight.
- YieldA goose of 8–10 lb serves six to eight; there is less meat on the frame than the weight suggests. The stuffing quantity given is on the modest side for a bird that size.
- The "old goose"The two-hour boil is for a mature bird, and it is sound advice — an older goose is tough and needs the longer wet cooking. Farmed geese sold today are young and do not want it.
"Deviled" in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookery meant sharpened with mustard, cayenne or pepper and vinegar, usually applied to something rich or something left over — deviled kidneys, deviled bones, deviled crab. Goose invites the treatment for both reasons: it is a fatty bird, and the acid-and-mustard coat cuts through it. The instruction that "an old goose that can be cooked in no other way may be so dressed" is the honest heart of the recipe, and it suggests a cook who might well be faced with a bird of uncertain age. Parboiling before roasting was one way of dealing with tough poultry and with anything very fatty.