British Christmas Day 18 Turkey or Goose?
For those of you who have read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, you may recall that Scrooge sends the Cratchit family a “prize turkey”, this in many ways reflects the fact that he’d spent time in the USA and that turkey was a very fashionable up-market meal. The other thing is that one turkey will feed more mouths- and that was a factor in Scrooge’s decision.
However, the standard fare of a Christmas meal in England used to be the goose. Even Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Present had to agree: “There never was such a goose…Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration.”
There is a nursery rhyme that says it all:
- Christmas is coming,
- the geese are getting fat.
- Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
- If you haven’t got a penny, a ha'penny will do.
- If you haven’t got a ha'penny, then God bless you!
Goose had been the meal of choice for centuries, as this medieval manuscript demonstrates.
The goose is a perfect Christmas meal. Sustainable because geese are free-range, grass fed poultry. Geese are ready to be eaten twice a year. Once when they are young or “green” in the early summer and again when they are at their fattest and ripest toward the end of the year after having feasted on fallen grain, feeding amongst the stubble after harvest.
And of course, the feathers were so useful! Quills, fletching on arrows, down for pillows and mattresses.
In 1886, in London the largest market for geese was Leadenhall, where 880,000 geese were sold compared to 69,000 turkeys. That has been overturned in the 20th century when industrial poultry farming turned to the turkey instead.
However, something of a come-back is occurring! Goose is a healthier and more environmentally friendly meat than turkey.
Geese were the traditional meal for a lot of reasons. Firstly, they are easy to raise and a whole lot smarter than turkeys. Keeping a few to lay eggs and produce the next generation is easy. They’ll live for 20 years, are less messy and cleverer than ducks, healthier than chickens, make excellent burglar alarms and fine lawnmowers – a pair of geese will happily keep a quarter of an acre of grass trimmed, so long as its reasonably short when they find it.
Farmers could afford to have some around, being fed mostly on grass. They are regularly turned out onto the pastures and will stay in a flock. It is still a country sight to see a flock going from the farmhouse to the field.
Because geese are too independent and cantankerous to be farmed intensively, they suit the trend towards small-holdings and farmers who rely on traditional methods. That, too, is a plus that is making them more popular.
Roast goose is a dark meat, full of flavour and it doesn’t dry out the way a turkey does. Goose also has the softest fat in its category of animal. The fat turns to liquid at 111 degrees Fahrenheit (compared to duck fat, which liquefies at 126 degrees) making it easier to cook and its fat easier to consume, so much so that it is often sold in a jar!
Even if modern Brits now eat more turkeys than they do geese, the supermarkets all sell goose fat in which to do the roast potatoes. The result is a potato that is soft and fluffy inside, crispy and crunchy on the outside.
Somehow, I see goose being on the menu at Sherlock’s parents’ house.