Roast Goose
Be sure and select a tender goose. When ready to roast, take a lemon and rub the goose well, inside and out. Put in the roasting pan, and roast until half done, then stuff with dressing made of toasted light bread and egg bread, season this highly wth garlic or onion, pepper and salt to taste, and a little chopped celery. You can add a cup of chestnuts if liked. Blanched (boiled) and chopped fine.
The recipe gives no oven temperature, no weight and no timing, which was normal for 1920 when a cook judged a goose by eye. The particulars below fill in what the original assumes.
- Bird size and yieldA market goose runs 9-12 lb and yields far less meat per pound than a turkey of the same weight, since the frame is heavy and the fat layer thick. Count on serving six to eight from a 10 lb bird.
- Oven temperatureRoast at 325F throughout, or start at 425F for 30 minutes to set the skin and drop to 325F. Figure roughly 20-25 minutes per pound, with the thigh joint reading 175F and the juices running clear.
- The fat is the pointPrick the skin all over the breast and thighs with a fork or skewer before roasting so the subcutaneous fat can escape. Pour it out of the pan two or three times during cooking, or the bird sits and fries; strained and chilled, goose fat keeps for months.
- "Egg bread"In Southern usage egg bread usually means a cornbread enriched with egg rather than a wheat loaf, though the recipe itself does not say. If read that way, use day-old cornbread crumbled together with toasted white bread in roughly equal parts.
- Stuffing added halfwayFilling the cavity partway through roasting is unusual now, and it means the dressing has less time in the heat than the bird does. Pack it loosely and check that the centre of the stuffing itself reaches 165F, not just the meat around it.
- ChestnutsA cup means shelled and peeled nuts, boiled until tender and chopped. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts substitute directly; canned water chestnuts do not.
- The lemon rubRubbing the cut lemon over skin and cavity is sometimes said to counter a strong or fishy note in waterfowl, though this is kitchen tradition rather than documented fact. It also dries the skin slightly, which helps it crisp.
- "Season this highly"The instruction applies to the dressing, not the goose. A dressing meant to stand up to goose fat needs considerably more salt, pepper and allium than one for chicken; taste it before it goes in.
Goose was the festive roast of the English and German kitchen long before turkey took the American holiday table, and it survived in the United States largely in households with those traditions. The dressing here, built on "egg bread" and seasoned with garlic, celery and chestnuts, may point toward a Southern habit rather than a Northern one, where oyster or sage-and-onion stuffings were common. The insistence on selecting a tender goose reflects an era when poultry was bought whole from a market or raised at home, and an old bird meant a long braise instead of a roast.