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Goose Stuffing
To those who object to the high flavor of the onion stuffing the following is to be recommended. The following recipe gives a stuffing with a fine green color, if fresh herbs are used. In case these are not obtainable, dry herbs may be used, and the green color obtained by pressing a handful of cooked spinach through a piece of cheese cloth. Mix together one tablespoonful each of chopped thyme, marjoram, parsley and chives. Add two cupfuls of fine bread crumbs, one teaspoonful of salt, a dash of cayenne, two tablespoonfuls of butter, and one cupful of beef stock. In case the stock is not obtainable, boil the heart, liver, gizzard, and scalded and scraped feet in one cupful of water for half an hour. Strain and use. The liver of a goose is especially fine, so be careful to use it in some way. It may be chopped fine and mixed with the sauce.
A herb-and-crumb dressing meant as the lighter alternative to the sage-and-onion stuffing usual with goose. The quantities are small by modern standards and the giblet stock is the part worth the trouble.
- YieldTwo cups of crumbs with the stock and butter makes a modest quantity, likely enough only for a smaller bird. A large goose will want the recipe doubled, or the surplus cavity filled with quartered apple and onion.
- Bread crumbs"Fine bread crumbs" may mean either soft crumbs from day-old bread or dry crumbs sifted fine; the recipe does not say. Dry packaged crumbs will take up the cup of stock at once and can set into a paste, so use rather less of them.
- Herb measuresA tablespoon each of thyme, marjoram, parsley and chives means fresh, chopped. Dried herbs go in at about a third of the volume — a teaspoon each — and the recipe's spinach trick is only there to restore the colour that dried herbs cannot give.
- The spinachCook the spinach, then squeeze the pulp through cheesecloth and use the green juice and fine pulp, not the leaf. It is colour only and adds no useful flavour.
- Giblet stockGoose feet are rich in gelatin and give the stock body. Few butchers include them now; a half hour's simmer of the heart and gizzard in a cup of water does much the same, and a cup of good chicken or beef stock is an honest substitute.
- The liverGoose liver cooks very fast and turns grainy if overdone. The recipe boils it with the other giblets for the stock, but you may instead chop it raw into the stuffing, or sear it briefly and fold it into the gravy at the end, as the recipe also allows.
- Cooking it safelyStuffing packed into a goose sits in rendering fat and heats slowly. Take it to 165F on a thermometer at the centre, or bake it in a buttered dish alongside the bird for 30-40 minutes at 350F, moistened with a little more stock and a few spoonfuls of goose fat.
- Cayenne"A dash" in a book of this period is a small pinch, well under an eighth of a teaspoon. It is there to lift the herbs, not to be tasted as heat.
Roast goose was a set piece of the American and British autumn and winter table, and the usual dressing was sage with a great deal of onion — strong enough that some cookbooks of the period offered an alternative for those who found it coarse. This is that alternative: a herb mixture of thyme, marjoram, parsley and chives standing in for the blunter Anglo-American sage. The concern with a "fine green color" fits a period in which appearance at table was discussed alongside flavour, and spinach juice was one of the colourings cooks had to hand. The instruction to scald and scrape the feet and simmer them with the giblets belongs to a household that bought birds whole and undrawn.