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Gravy for Roasted Goose
When the goose is roasted or baked turn nearly all of the fat out of the pan, but do not pour away the brown part of the drippings. Put the pan over the fire, stir into it one piled tablespoonful of flour, and let the flour brown; then stir in a pint of boiling water, season the gravy with salt and pepper, boil for a moment, and serve.
A plain pan gravy in the old style: fat poured off, flour browned in the fond, water rather than stock. A few notes will bring it up to modern expectations.
- The hingeEverything depends on the browned drippings stuck to the pan. Pour off the clear fat but leave the dark residue and a spoonful or so of fat behind, and scrape the pan hard as the liquid goes in.
- QuantitiesOne piled tablespoon of flour to a pint (2 cups) of liquid gives a thin, pourable gravy in the period manner. For something closer to modern gravy, use two to three tablespoons of flour to the same pint.
- Brown the flour properly"Let the flour brown" means two to four minutes of constant stirring over medium heat until it smells nutty and turns the colour of weak coffee. Pale roux tastes raw; scorched roux turns bitter and loses thickening power.
- Boiling water mattersAdding boiling rather than cold water keeps the pan from dropping temperature. Add it in a thin stream while whisking to keep the gravy smooth.
- "Boil for a moment" is shortFlour-thickened gravy needs three to five minutes at a simmer to cook out the pastiness, not the few seconds the wording suggests. It will also thicken slightly as it goes.
- Water versus stockThe recipe calls for plain water. Giblet stock, or stock made from the neck and wing tips while the bird roasts, gives a far better result for the same effort.
- Goose fatThe fat you pour off is worth keeping. Strained into a jar it holds for months refrigerated and is the best possible medium for roast potatoes.
- YieldAbout two cups, enough for eight to ten servings alongside a roast goose.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and his 1896 book folds hotel cookery together with the plain domestic recipes that any American housekeeper of the period would recognise — this gravy is squarely the latter. Roast goose was a winter and holiday bird in the United States well into the twentieth century, before turkey took the field almost entirely, and its enormous fat yield is why the recipe opens by telling you to pour most of it away. The method itself is the standard nineteenth-century pan gravy: dredge flour into the fond, brown it, slacken with boiling liquid. It descends from the French roux but arrives here stripped of any pretension, with water in place of stock and no wine, which tells you the recipe was set down for a household cook rather than for the hotel line.