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Baked Gosling
Select a gosling--not very young, for the flesh is then flabby--and after it has hung for a day or so, pluck, singe and draw it; then put it in water with a little salt, and let it remain for several hours, to remove the strong taste. Wash and wipe the inside, and fill it with a stuffing made with finely-mashed potatoes, a little lump of butter, a pinch of salt or fresh pork chopped very fine, a minced onion and a small quantity each of chopped parsley, thyme and sage. Sew it up, truss and grease it all over with butter or lard. Put it on a trivet on a baking-dish with the giblets; pour into the dish one breakfast cupful of boiling water, and put it into a quick oven. Baste frequently, turning it round now and then so as to brown on both sides. When thoroughly cooked, put on a dish with gravy, and serve with onion sauce.
A straightforward roast goose, written for a bird bought whole and undressed. Nearly all the work in a modern kitchen is in managing fat and knowing when the bird is done, since the original gives neither a time nor a temperature you can act on.
- What a gosling isA young goose, generally under six months and 6-9 lb dressed. Oscar's warning against the very young bird is about texture, not safety; a supermarket frozen goose of that weight behaves the same way. Order one from a butcher, as they are seasonal and rarely stocked.
- Skip the hangingThe original hangs the bird in feather and undrawn for a day before plucking and drawing it, which was normal in 1896 and is not now. A modern goose arrives eviscerated and chilled; keep it refrigerated and use it within a day or two of purchase.
- The salt soakSeveral hours in lightly salted water is a mild brine meant to soften the rank taste of an older or gamier bird. It works, but do it in the refrigerator, not on a counter. With a farmed goose it is optional; an hour is plenty.
- "A pinch of salt or fresh pork"The line is garbled in the original. Read it as mashed potato, butter, salt, and optionally fresh pork chopped very fine, with the onion and herbs. Roughly 4 to 6 cups of stuffing will fill a bird this size; around half a pound of fresh pork or unsmoked sausage meat is a reasonable proportion.
- A quick oven425-450F. Start there for 20-30 minutes to set the skin, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder, or the fat renders too fast and the breast dries.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is a large teacup, roughly 8-10 fl oz. One cup of boiling water in the pan is right; its purpose is to keep the drippings from scorching, so top it up as it evaporates.
- The fatA goose gives off a great deal of it. Use a deep roasting pan with the trivet, and ladle the fat off two or three times during cooking or the basting liquid becomes pure grease. Strain and keep it; it is the best roasting fat in the kitchen.
- Doneness"Thoroughly cooked" means about 2 to 2.5 hours for an 8 lb bird at the temperatures above. Check 165F in the thickest part of the thigh and in the centre of the stuffing, which is the slower of the two.
- Onion sauce and yieldThe period onion sauce is onions boiled soft, chopped, and finished in a white sauce, close to a soubise. A bird this size serves four to six, less generously than its weight suggests, since a goose is mostly frame and fat.
Goose was the standard festive roast in Britain and much of northern Europe long before turkey displaced it, and the young bird, or gosling, was the spring and autumn version of that tradition. The salt-water soak and the potato stuffing both point to the practical problem of the dish: goose is fatty and strongly flavoured, and the cook's job is to cut both. Potato was thought to carry rendered fat better than breadcrumbs, and sage and onion are the herbs traditionally paired with goose and pork. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, compiled this book from the hotel's kitchen and from the wider domestic repertoire of the 1890s; the entry reads like the latter, assuming a household that buys birds in feather and hangs them, rather than a hotel brigade. Onion sauce alongside was one English convention, and appears in nineteenth-century cookbooks.