Maybe in your Christmas reading, you have wondered about cooking a goose. You’ve read about the Cratchit’s Christmas dinner: “There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last. Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows.” Here, Isabella Beeton writes on how to choose and prepare this bird.
Don’t forget the Smoking Bishop drink, which is not the same as the cheese Stinking Bishop. Honestly, I don’t think I would like either of them.
I don’t know about Roast Goose but my goose has been cooked many a time. I’ve never needed a recipe or a plan. It just suddenly dawns on me that my goose is cooked. Usually cooked goose goes really well with a big slice of humble pie.
Well, since you bring it up, the phrase “cook his goose” was first used (according to records) in an English ballad condemning Pope Pius IX for “Papal Aggression.” The example in my encyclopedia is such that I think it must have been in popular use before that, maybe as oral history (sound or un-) for a story told of Sweden’s Eric XIV, who supposedly retaliated against a town which had hung out a goose to “sliyghte his forces” by burning the town. The goose was a symbol of stupidity, and Eric took the public insult personally, saying to the town’s people, “[I will] cook your goose!”