GOOSE FEATHERS. These being deemed particularly valuable, the birds in some counties are plucked four or five times in a year. The first operation is performed in the spring for feathers and quills, and is repeated for feathers only, between that period and Michaelmas. Though the plucking of geese appears to be a barbarous custom, yet experience has proved, that if carefully done, the birds thrive better, and are more healthy, when stripped of their feathers, than if they were left to drop them by moulting. Geese intended for breeding in farm yards, and which are called old geese, may be plucked three times a year, at an interval of seven weeks, but not oftener. Every one should be thirteen or fourteen weeks old before they are subject to this operation, or they are liable to perish in cold summers; and if intended for the table, they would become poor and lose their quality, were they stripped of their feathers at an earlier period.
GOOSE PIE. Quarter a goose, season it well, put it in a baking dish, and lay pieces of butter over it. Put on a raised crust, and bake it in a moderate oven. To make a richer pie, forcemeat may be added, and slices of tongue. Duck pie is made in the same manner.
GOOSE SAUCE. Put into melted butter a spoonful of sorrel juice, a little sugar, and some scalded gooseberries. Pour it into boats, and send it hot to table.
GOOSEBERRY FOOL. Put the fruit into a stone jar, with some good Lisbon sugar. Set the jar on a stove, or in a saucepan of water over the fire: if the former, a large spoonful of water should be added to the fruit. When it is done enough to pulp, press it through a cullender. Have ready a sufficient quantity of new milk, and a tea-cupful of raw cream, boiled together, or an egg instead of the latter. When cold, sweeten it pretty well with fine Lisbon sugar, and mix the pulp with it by degrees.
GOOSEBERRY HOPS. Gather the largest green gooseberries of the walnut kind, and slit the tops into four quarters, leaving the stalk end whole. Pick out the seeds, and with a strong needle and thread fasten five or six together, by running the thread through the bottoms, till they are of the size of a hop. Lay vine leaves at the bottom of a tin preserving-pan, cover them with the hops, then a layer of leaves, and so on: lay a good many on the top, and fill the pan with water. Stop it down so close that no steam can escape, set it by a slow fire till scalding hot, and then take it off to cool. Repeat the operation till the gooseberries, on being opened, are found to be of a good green. Then drain them on sieves, and make a thin syrup of a pound of sugar to a pint of water, well boiled and skimmed. When the syrup is half cold, put in the fruit; give it a boil up, and repeat it thrice. Gooseberry hops look well and eat best dried, and in this case they may be set to dry in a week. But if to be kept moist, make a syrup in the above proportions, adding a slice of ginger in the boiling. When skimmed and clear, give the gooseberries one boil, and pour the syrup cold over them. If found too sour, a little sugar may be added, before the hops that are for drying receive their last boil. The extra syrup will serve for pies, or go towards other sweetmeats.
GOOSEBERRY JAM. Gather some ripe gooseberries, of the clear white or green sort, pick them clean and weigh them. Allow three quarters of a pound of lump sugar to a pound of fruit, and half a pint of water. Boil and skim the sugar and water, then put in the fruit, and boil it gently till it is quite clear. Break the gooseberries into jam, and put into small pots.—Another. Gather some ripe gooseberries in dry weather, of the red hairy sort, and pick off the heads and tails. Put twelve pounds of them into a preserving pan, with a pint of currant juice, drawn as for jelly. Boil them pretty quick, and beat them with a spoon; when they begin to break, add six pounds of white Lisbon sugar, and simmer them slowly to a jam. They require long boiling, or they will not keep; but they make an excellent jam for tarts and puffs. When the jam is put into jars, examine it after two or three days; and if the syrup and fruit separate, the whole must be boiled again. In making white gooseberry jam, clarified sugar should be used; and in all cases great care must be taken to prevent the fruit from burning to the bottom of the pan.
GOOSEBERRY PUDDING. Stew some gooseberries in a jar over a hot hearth, or in a saucepan of water, till reduced to a pulp. Take a pint of the juice pressed through a coarse sieve, and mix it with three eggs beaten and strained. Add an ounce and a half of butter, sweeten it well, put a crust round the dish, and bake it. A few crumbs of roll should be mixed with the above to give it a little consistence, or four ounces of Naples biscuits.
GOOSEBERRY TRIFLE. Scald as much fruit as when pulped through a sieve, will cover the bottom of a dish intended to be used. Mix with it the rind of half a lemon grated fine, sweetened with sugar. Put any quantity of common custard over it, and a whip on the top, as for other trifles.
GOOSEBERRY VINEGAR. Boil some spring water; and when cold, put to every three quarts, a quart of bruised gooseberries in a large tub. Let them remain two or three days, stirring often; then strain through a hair bag, and to each gallon of liquor add a pound of the coarsest sugar. Put it into a barrel, with yeast spread upon a toast, and cover the bung hole with a piece of slate. The greater the quantity of sugar and fruit, the stronger the vinegar.
GOOSEBERRY WINE. When the weather is dry, gather gooseberries about the time they are half ripe. Pick them clean as much as a peck into a convenient vessel, and bruise them with a piece of wood, taking as much care as possible to keep the seeds whole. Now having put the pulp into a canvas bag, press out all the juice; and to every gallon of the gooseberries, add about three pounds of fine loaf sugar. Mix the whole together by stirring it with a stick, and as soon as the sugar is quite dissolved, pour it into a cask which will exactly hold it. If the quantity be about eight or nine gallons, let it stand a fortnight: if twenty gallons, forty days, and so on in proportion. Set it in a cool place; and after standing the proper time, draw it off from the lees. Put it into another clean vessel of equal size, or into the same, after pouring out the lees and making it clean. Let a cask of ten or twelve gallons stand for about three months, and twenty gallons for five months, after which it will be fit for bottling off.