Home › Meats › Roast Goose, Bread and Apple Dressing
Roast Goose, Bread and Apple Dressing
Wipe inside with damp cloth, and season with salt and pepper; put in dressing and sew up. Push back skin and cut off neck. In the skin put 2 apples, which have been pared and quartered; tie the skin. Put in pan breastbone up; dust with salt, pepper and flour. Place in hot oven; when seared, baste with 2 cups cold water; turn breast side down and roast 2 hours, basting three or four times (always with cold water). Ten minutes before serving time, turn breast side up. Remove fat and make gravy as directed for "Roast Poultry". DRESSING 1 loaf stale bread 1 quart finely chopped cooking apples 2 tablespoons chopped parsley 2 tablespoons chopped onions 1 egg 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/8 teaspoon paprika 1 tablespoon drippings or butter Put drippings and onion into frying pan, cook a few minutes and add chopped apples. Cover bread with cold water a few minutes, remove and press out all water. Put into pan; add seasoning and well-beaten egg; keep mashing with wire potato masher until thoroughly cooked.
Fish, Meat and Vegetable Sauces Thin Cream Sauce 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup milk or cream 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon white pepper Melt butter in saucepan over fire, add flour and mix well; add cold milk slowly, stirring until smooth and creamy; add salt and pepper and boil about 3 minutes.
A pre-thermometer roasting method for a bird that is mostly fat. The instructions assume you know how big your goose is and when it is done; both need filling in.
- Size and yieldNo weight is given. A domestic goose runs 8-12 lb and feeds perhaps four to six, since the frame is heavy and the meat yield is low relative to a turkey of the same weight. The dressing quantity here would suit a bird at the larger end.
- Oven heat"Hot oven" in this period is usually reckoned at roughly 400-450F. Use it only for the initial searing, then drop to 325-350F for the two hours of roasting, or the fat renders too fast and the skin scorches before the thighs are done.
- Doneness, not clock timeTwo hours is a guide. Goose is done when the thickest part of the thigh reads 165-175F and the juices run clear; the breast will be pink at 165F, which is correct for goose. Stuffing inside the cavity must also reach 165F, and that is usually what determines the total time.
- The fat is the hingeA goose can shed two to four cups of fat. Prick the skin over the breast and thighs before roasting, set the bird on a rack, and ladle fat out of the pan several times during cooking rather than letting it pool. Save it; goose fat keeps refrigerated for months and is the best medium there is for potatoes.
- Basting with cold waterThe cold water is clearly deliberate: the recipe repeats "always with cold water". It is traditionally said to help draw the fat out and to keep the skin from setting too early, though that is explanation after the fact. Either way the pan drippings end up a fat-and-water mixture, and the recipe duly says to remove the fat before making gravy.
- The neck skinPushing back the neck skin, filling it with quartered apples and tying it makes a second small stuffing pocket. The recipe does not say what becomes of these apples.
- The dressingA loaf of stale bread means roughly 1 lb, or about 8 cups of torn crumb. Soaking and wringing it out gives a dense, almost pudding-like dressing rather than a loose crumb one. "Keep mashing until thoroughly cooked" means working it in the pan over heat for several minutes until the apple breaks down and the egg sets.
- Stuff or bake alongsideFilling the cavity slows the roast and holds the stuffing at unsafe temperatures for longer. Baking the dressing in a separate dish at 350F for 35-45 minutes, moistened with a little of the pan juices, gives a faster roast and a better crust.
- Cooking applesA quart chopped is about 1 to 1 1/4 lb. Use a variety that collapses -- Bramley, McIntosh, Gravenstein -- since the dressing depends on the apple falling apart into the bread.
Goose was the festive roast of northern Europe long before turkey displaced it, and the pairing with apple is old and practical: the fruit's acid cuts a bird that is far fattier than chicken or turkey. Michaelmas geese in September and Christmas geese in December were both traditional in Britain. Bread-and-apple dressings seasoned with nutmeg and onion are found in English as well as German and Central European cooking, and the Central European versions were reinforced in American kitchens by nineteenth-century immigration. The roast goose sits a few lines from a plain cream sauce with no transition at all.