Roast Goose
Select a goose for roasting with a clean white skin, plump breast and yellow feet; if these are a reddish yellow, the bird is old. It should be well plucked and drawn and trussed firmly. Many persons claim that goose-flesh is too oily; to overcome this, rub the flesh well with a cut lemon, also rub the inside. This renders the flesh of a good color also.
The stuffing for a goose is a matter of taste. Roast goose with sage and onions, parboil four medium-sized onions, throw the water away and cover with fresh, boil until tender; cover ten leaves of sage with boiling water, let stand ten minutes, drain. Chop the onions and sage leaves very fine, add one large cupful of bread crumbs, add one teaspoonful of salt, and one teaspoonful of paprika. When well mixed add two tablespoonfuls of butter, the juice of one-half of a lemon, and two well-beaten eggs. Stuff the goose with this, sew up the opening, and cook in a brisk oven, basting every ten minutes with hot water at first, and then with the gravy that flows from the birds. A large goose will require from one hour and a half to two hours' roasting.
A straightforward roast, but the timing and the oven instruction both need translating, and modern geese are fattier and heavier than the book assumes.
- Time is the weak pointAn hour and a half to two hours will not cook a supermarket goose of 10-12 lb. Reckon on 2 1/2 to 3 hours and go by temperature: 165F in the thickest part of the breast, 175F in the thigh, and 165F in the centre of the stuffing.
- "A brisk oven"Roughly 400-450F in modern terms. Start high for 20-30 minutes to set and colour the skin, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder, or the fat will smoke and the breast will dry out well before the legs are done.
- Score and prick the skinThe single most useful thing the recipe omits. Prick the fat pads over the breast and thighs all over with a skewer, angled so you do not pierce the meat. This is what actually renders out the oiliness the author is worried about; the lemon rub is cosmetic by comparison.
- Deal with the fatA goose throws off two to four cups of fat. Roast on a rack over a deep pan and ladle the fat off two or three times during cooking, or the bird sits and fries. Strain and keep it refrigerated; it holds for months and is excellent for potatoes.
- Basting with hot waterThe recipe starts with water and switches to pan drippings; the water stage was probably a hedge against scorching in an unregulated range. In a thermostatic oven it works against you, softening skin you want crisp. Skip it; the bird bastes itself.
- Sage quantityTen fresh sage leaves is roughly a tablespoon chopped. If using dried, one to one and a half teaspoons, and skip the boiling-water steep, which appears to be there to soften the harshness of fresh leaves.
- "One large cupful" of crumbsRead as a generous cup, say 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of soft fresh crumbs. This makes a small quantity of stuffing for a large bird - enough to flavour the cavity, not to fill it. If you want stuffing as a side dish, bake a second batch separately.
- Stuffing inside the birdCavity stuffing slows the roast and must itself reach 165F. If that pushes the breast past done, cook the stuffing in a dish alongside and put only onion, lemon and sage in the cavity.
- YieldA goose gives far less meat per pound than a turkey. A 10-12 lb bird serves six to eight.
Goose with sage and onion is the standard English roast of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tied to Michaelmas at the end of September, when geese fattened on stubble fields came to market and rents fell due. The onion-and-sage pairing is old and durable - sage's resinous bitterness cuts the fat in a way few other herbs manage - and it carried over into American cookbooks like this one, here with additions of its own. The paprika is the modern touch, appearing alongside a very traditional stuffing. The opening paragraph on yellow feet, white skin and plump breast is a reminder that readers were expected to buy a whole undressed bird from a market stall and judge its age themselves; reddish-yellow feet meant an old bird.