Goose.—(No. 59.)
When a goose is well picked, singed, and cleaned, make the stuffing with about two ounces of onion,137-* and half as much green sage, chop them very fine, adding four ounces, i. e. about a large breakfast-cupful of stale bread-crumbs, a bit of butter about as big as a walnut, and a very little pepper and salt (to this some cooks add half the liver,137-† parboiling it first), the yelk of an egg or two, and incorporating the whole well together, stuff the goose; do not quite fill it,[138] but leave a little room for the stuffing to swell; spit it, tie it on the spit at both ends, to prevent its swinging round, and to keep the stuffing from coming out. From an hour and a half to an hour and three-quarters, will roast a fine full-grown goose. Send up gravy and apple sauce with it (see Nos. 300, 304, 329, and 341). To hash it, see No. 530.
For another stuffing for geese, see No. 378.
Obs. “Goose-feeding in the vicinity of the metropolis is so large a concern, that one person annually feeds for market upwards of 5000.” “A goose on a farm in Scotland, two years since, of the clearly ascertained age of 89 years, healthy and vigorous, was killed by a sow while sitting over her eggs; it was supposed she might have lived many years, and her fecundity appeared to be permanent. Other geese have been proved to reach the age of 70 years.” Moubray on Poultry, p. 40.
It appears in Dr. Stark’s Experiments on Diet, p. 110, that “when he fed upon roasted goose, he was more vigorous both in body and mind than with any other diet.”
The goose at Michaelmas is as famous in the mouths of the million, as the minced-pie at Christmas; but for those who eat with delicacy, it is by that time too full-grown.
The true period when the goose is in its highest perfection, is when it has just acquired its full growth, and not begun to harden. If the March goose is insipid, the Michaelmas goose is rank; the fine time is between both, from the second week in June to the first in September: the leg is not the most tender part of a goose. See Mock Goose (No. 51).