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Devilled Goose
After cleaning the goose and wiping it well with a damp cloth, plunge it into a kettle of boiling water, and boil moderately for one hour. Take it from the kettle, drain well, and wipe it dry. Fill the body and neck with potato stuffing, truss and sew up the same as directed for roast turkey, and roast in a very hot oven, allowing fifteen minutes to the pound. Pour over it the following mixture and baste frequently: Four tablespoons of vinegar; one tablespoon of pepper; two tablespoons of made mustard. Boil the giblets, and make the gravy as directed in the chapter on Sauces for Fish, Meats, Poultry and Game. 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.
A two-stage method — parboil, then roast under a hot vinegar-mustard basting — designed as much to tame an old, tough bird as to flavour a young one. A few of the instructions need translating before you commit a goose to it.
- The hinge: fat managementA goose carries far more subcutaneous fat than a turkey, and the hour of boiling starts rendering it. Prick the skin all over before roasting and pour the fat out of the pan every 20 to 30 minutes, or the vinegar baste will simply float on an inch of grease and the drippings will be unusable for gravy.
- "A very hot oven"Period equivalents vary from source to source, but this is usually taken as somewhere around 450F or above. Fifteen minutes to the pound at that heat will scorch a bird that has already had an hour in boiling water; starting hot for 20 to 30 minutes to set the skin, then dropping to 350F and roasting to an internal temperature of 165–175F in the thigh, away from bone, is the safer course.
- "Made mustard"Prepared wet mustard, not dry powder — an English-style mustard mixed with vinegar or water. Two tablespoons of a modern hot English mustard is roughly equivalent; Dijon works but is milder and sweeter.
- One tablespoon of pepperThat is the "devil" in devilled, and it is a deliberately fierce amount. It is not a misprint, but on an unstuffed breast it will read as harsh; a teaspoon to a tablespoon, depending on how much of the mixture actually clings, suits most palates.
- Potato stuffingA mashed-potato stuffing, made up elsewhere in the book. Because the bird is already hot from parboiling, stuff it immediately before it goes in the oven, not in advance, and check that the stuffing centre also reaches 165F.
- The parboilAn hour of moderate boiling renders fat and tenderises, and partly cooks the bird as well. Save the cooking water: it is essentially goose broth and makes a better giblet gravy than plain stock.
- "An old goose"Market geese today are young birds of a few months, so the two-hour version is obsolete. If you do have a mature farm bird, braising or confit will serve it better than roasting at any temperature.
- YieldA whole goose of 8 to 10 lb dresses out surprisingly small — count on six servings, eight at a stretch. Buy by weight assuming about 1.5 lb of raw bird per person.
To "devil" in nineteenth-century cookery meant to coat something in a hot, sharp paste — mustard, cayenne, black pepper, vinegar — and expose it to fierce heat, a treatment applied indiscriminately to kidneys, bones, biscuits, crab and, here, goose. The culinary use of the word is recorded from the late eighteenth century and carried a whiff of the chophouse and the late supper about it. What is telling in this entry is the closing sentence: the devilling is offered explicitly as a rescue for "an old goose that can be cooked in no other way." Geese were often kept for some years before they reached the table, and a bird past its prime was tough, strong-flavoured and greasy. Parboiling drew out fat and softened the muscle; a lash of mustard and vinegar covered whatever remained. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued this book for households that were expected to make thrift look like intent.