No. 1953

Gosling Sauted with Tomatoes, Robert Sauce

Oison Saute aux Tomates a la Sauce Robert

Have a good gosling, singe, draw and cut it up into seven pieces--the two legs and five pieces taken from the breast; season with salt and pepper and fry slowly in lard. Drain off the fat and detach the glaze from the pan with a little clear gravy (No. 404). Cut twelve peeled tomatoes across in two, press out the juice and seeds and fry them in a frying pan with very hot oil; season with salt, pepper and a crushed and chopped clove of garlic. When the pieces are cooked, dish up and dress the fried tomatoes over; sprinkle very green chopped parsley on top, pour the gravy around and serve separately some Robert sauce (No. 533).

← No. 1952 Roast Gosling or Mongrel Goose Duck & Goose No. 1954 Gosling Stewed with Turnips →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a butcher who will sell you a young goose and a kitchen with brown stock and Robert sauce already standing by. Both assumptions need work, but the dish itself is straightforward: sauté, deglaze, garnish, sauce alongside.

What a gosling isA goose under about six months old, dressed weight roughly 6 to 8 lb, with tender flesh and less fat than a mature bird. Frozen young goose is the practical substitute; two 5 lb ducks, cut the same way, work in the same time frame and give closer to the intended tenderness.
The seven piecesTwo legs plus five pieces off the breast means the breast is cut through the bone into portions rather than filleted. A cleaver or heavy knife through the breastbone and ribs is the period method; boning out the two breast halves and cutting them into thick escalopes is easier and cooks more evenly.
Legs and breast do not finish togetherThis is the hinge. Goose leg wants 45 minutes to an hour of slow cooking to become tender; breast is at its best at 135-140F internal and dries out well before the legs are ready. Start the legs, add the breast pieces for the last 15 minutes, or cook them in separate pans.
Fry slowly in lardOnly enough lard to start the pan — a young goose renders plenty of its own fat within minutes. Keep the heat at a bare sizzle, skin side down first, and pour off accumulated fat as you go, which is what "drain off the fat" means before the deglazing.
No. 404 clear gravyAn unthickened light brown gravy in Ranhofer's system, used here purely to lift the glaze from the pan. Any good unsalted brown poultry or veal stock does the job; reduce a cup by half so it has body enough to coat the plate.
Robert sauceNo. 533 is the classic onion-based sauce: onion sweated in butter, moistened with wine and vinegar, reduced with a brown sauce and finished with mustard. Add the mustard off the heat, as boiling blunts its edge. Serve it in a boat, as the recipe directs, not poured over.
The tomatoesTwelve tomatoes halved, squeezed of juice and seeds, then fried in very hot oil until browned and collapsed at the edges. Out of season, plum tomatoes hold up better than large slicers; salt them after they have taken colour or they will stew rather than fry.
Garlic timingAdd the chopped clove in the last half-minute of the tomatoes' cooking. In oil hot enough to brown tomatoes it scorches almost immediately, and burnt garlic will carry through the whole dish.
YieldSeven pieces of bird; the twelve tomatoes suggest Ranhofer had a table of six or more in mind, so scale the garnish to the number you are actually feeding. The dish wants something plain alongside -- boiled potatoes or a simple pilaf -- since the Robert sauce and the fried tomatoes are both assertive.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working repertoire set down in French-classical order, which is why goose appears here in a range of preparations rather than only as a roast. Sauce Robert is one of the oldest named sauces in the French canon — Rabelais mentions a "Robert" sauce in the 1530s, and the invention is traditionally credited to a cook of that name, though the attribution is legend rather than record. What it has always meant in practice is onion, vinegar and mustard, the sharp trio used to cut rich meats: pork most often, and here a fatty young goose. The tomatoes are the newer element. By the 1890s tomatoes had moved from suspicion to staple in American kitchens, and fried tomato halves appear in Ranhofer as a garnish, doing the same acidic work as the sauce from a different direction.