Will you be having goose or turkey this Christmas? Most of us nowadays opt for turkey, but this hasn’t always been the case.
Both the goose and turkey have featured on our festive menus for centuries, but the goose can claim the longest pedigree. Anglo-Saxon farmers raised domestic varieties long before the turkey arrived from the New World in the first half of the 16th century.
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But because of its ability to produce large quantities of lean meat, the American newcomer rapidly became popular, particularly with the nobility. By 1573, the poet Thomas Tusser recommended turkey as a suitable addition to the English husbandman’s Christmas dinner, though it remained an expensive luxury until the 19th century.
On the other hand, geese were relatively cheap and plentiful and for generations were a far more important element in our rural economy. From medieval times onwards every English village had its pond and many cottagers ran a ‘lag’ of geese to provide meat for the table, grease for medicine and valuable feathers for selling to the fletcher (arrowsmith) or pen-cutter. A lag usually consisted of a gander and its harem of five geese. Goose feathers provided flights for the arrows that ensured victory for medieval English archers during the Hundred Years War.
From Beowolf to Pride and Prejudice, from Shakespeare’s sonnets to Newton’s Principia, every work of literature, science and philosophy was written with a quill pen removed from the wing of a humble farmyard goose. By the early 19th century, about nine million home-grown geese were plucked every year for pens. Although now mainly used for roasting potatoes, goose fat was formerly valued for its lubricant and medicinal properties. It was believed to cure baldness, chaps in the lips, noise in the ears and even the bite of a mad dog.
When was a goose traditionally served?
The most important occasion for serving goose was formerly St Michael’s Day (29 September). As soon as the harvest had been brought in, geese were turned on to the cereal fields to glean grain left in the stubble. As a result they grew to perfection in late September and October and until the middle of the 19th century, more roast geese were consumed at Michaelmas than at any other time.
When first hatched, baby geese were known as ‘gulls’. They became ‘goslings’ from one day old until they developed feathers. Young feathered birds were then called ‘green geese’ until they reached four months.
Our ancestors were partial to the delicate flesh of these juvenile birds, which were fattened on oats and buttermilk as delicacies for the June dinner table. They were often stuffed with gooseberries, or served with an acidic sorrel sauce that cut through their rich flesh.
Green geese in June, stubble goose in late September, but what about the traditional Christmas goose? A number left over from Michaelmas were fattened for the Christmas table. Unlike the free gleanings of the August cornfields, the bran, barley, oats and potatoes fed to them in the late autumn all had to be paid for, so a fresh goose at Christmas was pricey.
As a result, goose clubs were set up for the benefit of the poor, who would put a few pence away each week to ensure that the family could afford a bird on the big day.
How was a goose served?
The age-old method of roasting a goose was on an iron spit before a blaze in the inglenook. By the 19th century, clockwork devices called bottlejacks enabled less well-off country folk to roast theirs in front of a cottage fire, while the urban poor sent their birds to be cooked by the baker.
Roast geese were usually stuffed and the forcemeat served as a sauce. In a 1490s recipe, a goose is filled with a mixture of quinces, pears, grapes, garlic, sage and hyssop to make a fruity ‘sawce madame’. By Georgian times, a stuffing of chestnuts, or breadcrumbs, sage and onion had become the norm, while potatoes roasted before the fire in the dripping pan.
Perhaps the most spectacular dish of all was the ornamental Christmas pie, filled with a boned turkey, a boned goose and a medley of other fowl and game birds. This ancestor of the modern multi-bird roast was a great way of improving the texture and flavour of the turkey. The fat from the goose moistened the naturally dry flesh of the turkey, making this dish an ideal combination of our favourite Christmas birds.