No. 1954

Gosling Stewed with Turnips

Ragout d'Oison aux Navets

Cut up a small tender and well cleaned gosling into medium-sized pieces, suppressing the pinions, drumsticks and neck; cut also half a pound of lean bacon into half inch squares; fry them for a few moments in butter, and remove with the skimmer, leaving the fat in the saucepan; lay the pieces of goose into this fat, fry over a hot fire while stirring, season and add one onion and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf. When the meats are browned, drain off the fat and dredge the goose with flour, moisten to its height with hot stock (No. 194a), and boil up this liquid while stirring, letting it remain in this state for ten minutes; the sauce should now be slightly thickened. Cover well the saucepan with its lid and continue to cook moderately. Take raw turnips and cut them into balls three-quarters of an inch in diameter, place them in a pan with the strained fat from the goose, season with salt and a pinch of sugar, and color them briskly; when half cooked lift out the pieces of goose to trim neatly, strain its stock and return it to a clean saucepan with a gill of Marsala wine, the pieces of goose, the bacon and the turnips; boil together for ten minutes and finish cooking in a slack oven. The gosling and turnips should both be found done at the same time; dress all in a deep dish with very little sauce.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French navarin treatment applied to young goose, and the technique is sound; most of what needs translating is vocabulary and oven heat.

GoslingA gosling is a goose under about six months, typically 5-8 lb dressed, with meat far more tender than a mature bird. Frozen young goose is the usual modern substitute; two large duck legs and breasts, or a cut-up 5 lb goose, behave similarly, though an older bird will want an extra hour of gentle cooking before the turnips join it.
Slack ovenRanhofer gives no figure; 'slack' is conventionally read as a cool oven, somewhere around 250-300F. The aim is that the liquid never boils in the oven -- a bare shiver at the edge of the pot.
A gill of MarsalaHalf a cup. Use a dry Marsala; sweet Marsala plus the pinch of sugar on the turnips will push the dish toward cloying.
Lean baconMost likely unsmoked salt pork or French poitrine rather than modern sugar-cured smoked bacon. Blanch supermarket bacon lardons for two minutes before frying if you want the smoke to stay in the background.
Stock No. 194aA cross-reference to one of Ranhofer's stock recipes. A good unsalted brown chicken or veal stock is a workable equivalent; season lightly at the start, since the liquid reduces twice.
The hinge: drain the fat twiceGoose renders a great deal of fat, and the recipe removes it before the flour goes in, then reuses that strained fat to glaze the turnips. Skip the draining and the flour will bind grease instead of stock, and the finished sauce will break.
TurnipsCut into 3/4-inch balls with a melon baller, or simply into even chunks. They want browning in the goose fat with salt and sugar until glazed, then only enough time in the pot to finish -- roughly 25-35 minutes. Added too early they collapse into the sauce.
Timing and finishReckon on about an hour of covered stovetop cooking before the turnips go in, then 30-40 minutes in the slack oven. "Dress all in a deep dish with very little sauce" means the liquid should be reduced to a glaze that coats; reduce it separately on the stove if it has not tightened.
YieldA small gosling handled this way serves four to six as a main course.

A Little History

Ragout d'oison aux navets belongs to the same French family as canard aux navets and the spring lamb navarin: a browned meat, a flour-thickened brown stock, and root vegetables glazed apart in the rendered fat so they arrive whole rather than dissolved. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that kitchen, and its duck and goose chapter reflects a period when goose was still a market bird in American cities rather than a Christmas curiosity. Turnips are the traditional partner because they take up the fat that goose gives off in quantity -- a pairing generally traced to French farmhouse cooking, where the vegetable was cheap and the bird was rich, long before it reached a Manhattan dining room.