Goose, Green
INGREDIENTS . taste. AVERAGE COST, 4s. to 5s. four months old, and should not be stuffed, Geese are called green till they are about After it has been singed and trussed, put into the body a seasoning of pepper and salt, and the butter to moisten it inside GLAZE-KETTLE. as shown in the cut, one of which, the upper, containing the glaze, is inserted into one of larger diameter, and containing boiling water.
Glaze, To, Cold Joints, &c. - Melt the glaze by placing the vessel which contains it into the bain marie or saucepan of boiling water; brush it over the meat with a paste-brush, and if in places it is not quite covered, repeat the operation. The glaze should not be too dark a colour.
GOOSE READY FOR COOKING.
Roast before a clear fire for about 3/4 hour, froth and brown it nicely, and serve with a brown gravy, and, when liked, gooseberry-sauce . This dish should be garnished with watercresses.
TIME.-About hour.
Goose, 3 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to, SEASONABLE in June, July and August. ery.) - INGREDIENTS. - The remains of cold Goose, Hashed. (Cold Meat Cookroast goose, 2 onions, 2 oz. of butter, 1 pint of boiling water, 1 dessertspoonful of flour, pepper and salt to taste, 1 tablespoonful of port wine, 2 tablespoonfuls of mushroom ketchup. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the cold goose, 6d.
Cut up the goose into pieces of the size GOOSE, HASHED. required; the inferior joints, trimmings, &c., put into a stewpan to make the gravy; slice and fry the onions in the butter of a very pale brown; add these to the trimmings, and pour over about a pint of boiling water; stew these gently for 3/4 hour, then skim and strain the liquor. Thicken it with flour, and flavour with port wine and ketchup in the above proportion; add a seasoning of pepper and salt, and put in the pieces of goose; let these get thorough ly hot through, but do not allow them to boil, and serve with sippets of toasted bread.
TIME-Altogether, rather more than 1 hour.
SEASONABLE from September to March.
Two goose recipes sit here: a young green goose roasted plain, and a hash made from the remains of a roast. Both assume a bird considerably smaller and fattier than the frozen Christmas goose most cooks meet today.
- What a green goose isThe book states geese are called green until they are about four months old. Such birds were killed young, in early summer, and were small by modern standards -- commonly well under about 6 lb dressed, so two or three portions rather than a family bird. A supermarket goose is an older, heavier bird, typically around 9-12 lb, and will not behave the same way.
- The roasting timeThree-quarters of an hour suits only a genuinely small young bird turning close to a fierce open fire. In an oven, allow roughly 20 minutes per pound at 400F, and take the thigh to 165F/74C before resting. Prick the skin and pour off fat as it renders.
- No stuffing, and whyThe instruction is explicit: the bird is not stuffed, only seasoned inside with pepper, salt and butter. The usual explanation, though the book does not give one, is that a young green goose was eaten for its own mild flesh, sage and onion being associated with the older autumn bird.
- FrothingTo froth is to dredge the bird with flour and baste with butter near the end so the skin blisters and browns. Ten minutes at 425F will do the same work if the skin is not crisping.
- Gooseberry sauceGreen gooseberries are in season alongside green geese, and the two are traditionally served together; the coincidence of seasons is the usual explanation offered. Simmer them to a pur he the the sharpness cuts the fat much as apple does for pork.
- The hinge in the hashReheated goose must not boil. Boiling squeezes the already-cooked meat and turns it stringy. Bring the sauce to a bare shiver, slide the pieces in, and hold five minutes off direct heat.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, not the tomato condiment. Bottled versions still exist; a mix of Worcestershire sauce and a spoonful of soy is the nearest common substitute, used sparingly as both are saltier.
- SippetsSmall triangles of toasted or fried bread, set round the edge of the dish to soak up the sauce.
- The costs4s. to 5s. for the bird, and 6d. for the hash, which the recipe is careful to say excludes the cold goose already paid for. Victorian shillings and pence, of use now only as a rough measure of how little the second dinner added to the first.
Green geese were a fixed point of the English summer table, sold young from June to August and priced well above the mature Michaelmas bird that came in at the end of September. The seasonal notes attached to these two entries tell the whole story of one goose: roasted green in high summer, or, if it was an autumn bird, carved hot and then hashed through the winter months from September to March. The hash is one of the recipes labelled "(Cold Meat Cookery)", which sit within the chapters for each meat rather than in a chapter of their own, and Mrs Beeton's readers took them seriously because a large roast was expected to reappear at least twice. Port wine and mushroom ketchup in the gravy are the standard Victorian devices for giving reheated meat the depth it lost the first time round, and the sippets of toast are there to make a modest quantity of meat look like a dish.