Geese in Jane Austen

I’ve never been tempted to buy or cook one, given what my mother told me about managing to acquire one for Christmas dinner sometime IIRC after the war, when rationing was still going on. She said there was so much fat on it, there was barely enough actual meat to go round - they were very disappointed.
I do really like a crispy half duck, though, served with cucumber, spring onions and hoi sin sauce in Chinese pancakes.

Don’t forget Nottingham’s annual Goose Fair, which has been in existence since 1284. Thousands of geese were driven from the counties to the east to be sold, as a trade event, for eating at the traditional Michaelmas feast to celebrate the end of harvest. Their feet were coated in tar and sand to prepare them for the long walk. It has only ever been cancelled for the Great Plague, the two WW’s and Covid.

Dh recalled his mum plucking and gutting a goose on her parents’ smallholding, when he was a young boy. I’ve never had goose, I don’t think, my mum didn’t like it.

A friend of mine helped clear her Granny’s farmhouse and they found umpteen brown paper bags full of bits of string and 19lb of goose fat in those earthenware jars you used to get!

We use goose fat to sauté anything that doesn't need to start with olive oil. So sofrito and other starter casserole ingredients, meat for a chicken, steak or game pie, fried bread with eggs and bacon, pastry for a pork pies (though that was quite tricky to handle).
Goose fat has almost half the saturated fat of butter.

MaizieD

P.S I’ve read that swan is dry and fishy tasting. The Royals are welcome to it😆

... can't think of anything worse on a dinner plate - dry meat tasting like fish... ugh!

We have goose for Christmas every year - our neighbours would take the left over clarified fat - for what (other then roast potatoes) I know not - I have always wanted to cook ‘colonial goose’ using the Good Housekeeping recipe - maybe one day 👍☘️

We always have goose when we can. I cook it upside down on a rack to start with and pour off the fat before turning it over to brown. The fat is wonderful for cooking, including roast potatoes. We normally freeze some of it. I find turkey boring.

I think rabbit was the last meat I cooked (in student halls so a long time ago) other than a turkey for others at Christmas.

I was already a vegetarian by the time I cooked the rabbit and far too many people (who would later eat it) commented on how "gross" it was preparing it!

I wish people who ate meat would at least be able to prepare it themselves!

I remember joining the great panic buying frenzy one Christmas as tins of goose fat sold out after Delia and Nigella recommended it for roasting potatoes.

I have seen them on sale in Aldi at Christmas a few years ago, frozen and fresh. I know my previous neighbour had two one year but I think they had them from a butcher.

DH was a farm manager so in the seventies I was able to indulge my earth mother culinary ambitions by teaching myself to cook dishes like stuffed pigeon, rabbit stew, pheasant casserole and jugged hare thanks to Mrs Beaton and Elizabeth David. I was in my element and rarely out of the kitchen😂
DH would be only too happy to help local farmers out with machinery repairs if it meant a well stocked freezer!
Those were the days!! 😋

valdali

Rabbit is very out of fashion now I think. My Dad practically was reared on it, & we did breed rabbits for meat when I was a little girl (they were white with pink eyes & I was a bit traumatised). You could get it from most butchers'. I've never seen rabbit for sale in our local butchers.

My mother-in-law used to make rabbit stew many years ago. The rabbits were sold in a butchers in Leeds market. At one time, a whole aisle was devoted to butchers. Now there are only 2 butchers left in the market and they don't sell anything as at all unusual.

I like eating goose, perhaps for the wrong reasons. I am the only one in the family who likes it, so I rarely get to eat it. The wrong reasons? When I lived in St. Albans there was a large gaggle of geese that lived on the common. Maybe 50 of them? They were super aggressive and I got chased by about a dozen of them on the one and only time I walked on the common. When I eat goose it crosses my mind that in a small way, I am getting my own back. They are greasy to eat and as several people have said, there is a lot of fat for relatively little meat.

Rabbit is very out of fashion now I think. My Dad practically was reared on it, & we did breed rabbits for meat when I was a little girl (they were white with pink eyes & I was a bit traumatised). You could get it from most butchers'. I've never seen rabbit for sale in our local butchers.

I can remember having my chest rubbed with goose grease as a very young child, I think a bit of cloth went on afterwards to try to stop it spreading but I can’t remember a smell from it at all and I think I would have. Heaven knows where the goose grease came from, in the middle of London we certainly didn’t have any but obviously somebody did. I can also remember hot poultices being put on my neck for swollen glands and I hated that too. Makes you realise how lucky we are to have antibiotics now.

NotSpaghetti

A green goose is a spring one - young, "green" geese are more delicate and tender. They would have fed on fresh spring grass and greens, rather than being fattened up on grain or harvest leftovers later in the year. I think Christmas Geese were "Stubble Geese".

I don't remember Mansfield Park at all but they were considered a seasonal luxury.

Thank you for the explanation of a green goose NotSpaghetti. I had always thought it referred to the colour of the goose.

When I was young we always had a chicken at Christmas, which was an expensive luxury. I never tasted turkey until late 1960s and have never eaten goose and wouldn’t want to.
Now chicken is the cheapest meat. My cat won’t eat it because he’s holding out for beef, which is very very expensive. Waitrose has a sign by the beef saying CCTV in operation and shop lifting is theft. They probably have geese to order at Christmas.

fancyflowers

We were poor when I grew up, and our Christmas dinner was a chicken. We never ate it at any other time of year.
Our neighbours were richer than we were, although they were far from wealthy. They had turkey at Christmas and I remember being envious and asking what it tasted like. They said it tasted richer than chicken, but that really didn't mean anything to me.

we always had chicken too or a capon
other sunday dinners were generally turkey roll...

NotSpaghetti thanks for explaining re green goose

we have lots of geese at work. Some of them are invasive species (Egyptian, Canadian) I suppose even if not available in the butcher you could acquire one

We were poor when I grew up, and our Christmas dinner was a chicken. We never ate it at any other time of year.
Our neighbours were richer than we were, although they were far from wealthy. They had turkey at Christmas and I remember being envious and asking what it tasted like. They said it tasted richer than chicken, but that really didn't mean anything to me.

JamesandJon33

We did have goose, one Christmas , long ago. Very fatty if I remember… not pleasant.

You need to pierce the skin well before cooking, add no fat at all and keep draining the fat off as it cooks.

Goose is very tasty.

my late MIL swore by ‘goose grease’ for various ailments.

Apart from cooking roast potatoes in it, she rubbed it on the children’s chests if they had a cough or cold.

Rather messy and smelly I imagine.

🤨

We used to be given a goose for Christmas by a local farmer. It was always delicious but needed draining during roasting as so much fattier than turkey.
We used to roast a turkey crown as well as we always had a houseful over Christmas and New Year so needed leftovers.
You don’t get leftovers with a goose! 😋

I did goose once for Christmas but - and I had.been warned - it wasn't a success, but I can't remember why. I think it was rather dry.

We did have goose, one Christmas , long ago. Very fatty if I remember… not pleasant.

‘There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. It’s tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration’

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

My father loved goose so we did have it occasionally for celebration meals.
He would cook it very slowly and collect the fat for cooking - roasting potatoes for example but he also loved it on toast instead of butter.
We were a small family and a goose was just about big enough especially with all the trimmings alongside it.
It came via the butcher but from our local farm. The same way we bought chicken. I remember them wandering about the farm. They are REALLY loud!

I would think you can't mass produce geese. They are (nearly) monogamous, need to eat grass, need to wander, are territorial and aggressive. I think you have to be careful plucking geese too. The skin is different to chickens. Maybe that can't be easily automated?

I have a friend who keeps lots of different birds. He was really worried about the geese when bird flu was about as they were distressed with confinement. He spent a huge amount of time and money building an enormous roof over a piece of land near the shed so they had more room.
He says they lay very few eggs by the way.

Just read this:

"Until the 1950s, if a British family wanted a roast bird for Christmas, a goose was often the most practical option. Turkeys were around, but they were still considered an elite luxury for the wealthy. Geese were a staple of smallholders and traditional farms because they could survive happily by grazing on standard British grass."

Presumably the mass breeding of heavier turkeys made them significantly cheaper in the end.