Goose
To be stuffed with sage and onions, or with chestnuts. (See Forcemeats Nos. 6 and 7.) To be served with apple sauce or gooseberry sauce. A green goose is rarely stuffed, but his inside is pretty well seasoned with pepper and salt. Sauerkraut is considered a good garnish. GOOSEBERRY Comes under the name of Currant or Curran, but may here obtain a word or two for itself. It is known in some of the English shires under the name of Carberry, because it is red, or was known chiefly as red; of Feaberry, because it was deemed good for fevers; and of Wineberry, because of the wine it made: why it has been called Gooseberry is not so clear. The older herbalists always insisted that it was so called because it was used as a sauce for goose ; and the analogy of wineberry and feaberry would seem to bear them out. If this should not be satisfactory, we have to fall back upon the old English gorst, in modern English gorse, in Shakespeare, goss; an etymology which will at the same time account for the Scottish name of the berry, which varies between groset and grosart. The Scotch, it must be remembered, Gooseberry are great in gooseberries. It is a northern fruit. When there was not a tree nor a shrub to be found in the Shetland islands and the Orkneys, there were gooseberry bushes in abundance; and it was an old joke against the Shetlanders, that when they read their Bibles and tried to picture to themselves Adam hiding among the trees of the garden, they could only call up in vision a naked man cowering under a grosart bush. The gooseberries of Scotland are the perfection of their race, and for flavour and variety far beyond those of the south just as English gooseberries are better than those of the Continent. On the Continent they are little prized, and not very well known. The French have no name for them, distinct from that of red currants.
The gooseberry in cookery is used as a fruit pie; as a sauce for mackerel; and as Gooseberry Fool. This last word does not mean a fool, but comes from the French fouler, to crush. The following statement is borrowed, with a few slight alterations, from an old book of miscellaneous receipts. Gooseberry Fool.-"The good people of Northamptonshire maintain that all our best London cooks, in making gooseberry fool, are themselves little better than fools. There is no way, they insist, equal to their own, which is as follows:- After topping and tailing-that is, taking off clean the two ends of the gooseberries-scald them sufficiently with a very little water till all the fruit breaks. Too much water will spoil them. The water must not be thrown away, being so rich with the finest part of the fruit, that if left to stand till cold it will turn to jelly When the gooseberries are cold, mash them all together. Passing them through a sieve or colander spoils them. The fine natural flavour which resides in the skin no art can replace. The skins must therefore remain unseparated in the general mash. Sweeten with fine powdered sugar, Gourmand but add no nutmeg or other spice. Mix in at the last moment some rich cream, and it is ready. The young folks of Northamptonshire, after eating as much as they possibly can of this gooseberry fool, are said frequently to roll down a hill and begin eating again."
Gooseberry Sauce.-Boil half a pint of unripe gooseberries, and having poured off the water, rub them through a hair sieve. Mix the pulp thus obtained with a pat of butter, make it hot, and serve it for mackerel. This is enough; but a little ginger may be added, and taste may be consulted for sugar and for salt. The greening of spinach juice, which French cooks add, is very doubtful.