Roast Goose
The goose should not be more than eight months old, and the fatter the more tender and juicy the meat. A green" goose (four months old) is the choicest. Kill at least twenty-four hours before cooking; cut the neck close to the back, beat the breast-bone flat with a rolling-pin, tie the wings and legs securely, and stuff with the following mixture: three pints bread crumbs, six ounces butter or part butter and part salt pork, two chopped onions, one tea-spoon each of sage, black pepper and salt. Do not stuff very full, and stitch openings firmly together to keep flavor in and fat out. If the goose is not fat, lard it with salt pork, or tie a slice on the breast. Place in a baking-pan with a little water, and baste frequently with salt and water (some add onion and some vinegar), turning often SO vinegar), turning often so that the sides and back may all be nicely browned. When nearly done baste with butter and a little flour. Bake two hours, or more if old; when done take from the pan, pour off the fat, and to the brown gravy left add the chopped giblets which have previously been stewed till tender, together with the water they were boiled in; thicken with a little flour and butter rubbed together, bring to a boil, and serve with currant jelly. Apple sauce and onion sauce are proper accompaniments to roast goose.-Mrs. J. H. Shearer.
A complete roasting method that assumes a bird killed at home and a cook who knows her own oven. The gaps worth filling are temperature, fat management and doneness.
- The hinge: render the fatA goose carries far more subcutaneous fat than any turkey, and the whole point of the frequent turning and the salt-water basting here is to get that fat out and the skin brown. Prick the skin over the breast and thighs with a fork or skewer tip before roasting, keeping clear of the meat, and pour the rendered fat off the pan two or three times during cooking. If it collects it will smoke and the skin will steam rather than crisp.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A goose does well started at 425F for about 30 minutes to set the skin, then dropped to 325F for the remainder. Roasting entirely at one moderate temperature also works but gives softer skin.
- Time and donenessTwo hours suits a small bird. A dressed 10 to 12 lb goose needs closer to 2.5 to 3 hours at 325F. Go by a thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh, clear of bone: 170 to 175F, with juices running clear.
- The stuffingThree pints of crumbs is 1.5 quarts, a large quantity that may be more than a modern goose cavity will comfortably take; the recipe in any case says not to stuff very full. Bake any surplus in a dish alongside. Stuffing inside the bird must reach 165F, and in a fatty goose it will absorb a great deal of drippings; it is now common to roast the bird with only an onion and an apple in the cavity and bake the dressing separately.
- "Kill at least twenty-four hours before cooking"This is the old practice of letting a bird set before cooking, and it assumed a cold larder. A goose bought today comes already dressed and chilled. Keep it refrigerated until it goes in the oven; do not leave a bird at room temperature for a day.
- A green gooseA goose of about four months, killed in early summer, smaller and more tender than an autumn bird. Not a market category today. What you will find is a frozen young goose, generally 8 to 12 lb.
- Larding with salt porkRarely needed with a farmed goose, which is fat enough on its own. If the breast browns too fast, lay a foil tent over it rather than a slice of pork.
- The gravyPour off the fat before adding the giblet stock; there will be a great deal of it. Save it. Rendered goose fat keeps for months refrigerated and is the best possible medium for roast potatoes. Butter and flour rubbed together is beurre manié -- about 1 tablespoon of each will thicken a cup of gravy.
- YieldA goose gives much less meat per pound than a turkey. Figure a 10 lb bird for six people, eight at a stretch.
Goose was the festival bird of English and Anglo-American tables long before the turkey displaced it, and the two seasons that mattered were Michaelmas in late September, when the stubble-fed geese were at their best, and Christmas. The "green goose" of the recipe belongs to a third, earlier moment: a young bird of a few months, killed in early summer before it had fattened on grain, and prized for tenderness. That such a distinction appears in a Southern compilation like The Dixie Cook Book suggests, though it cannot prove, how much of its content came out of older English and Northern household books, absorbed and reprinted through the nineteenth century. The accompaniments named here — currant jelly, apple sauce, onion sauce — are the standard English trio, all of them acid or sweet, all of them there for the same reason: to cut the richness of a bird that is essentially cooked in its own fat. The instruction to beat the breast-bone flat with a rolling-pin is a practical touch from the days when the cook dressed her own poultry, though the recipe itself does not say what it was for.