My goose was cooked — and it wasn’t very good

Unlike Wagner’s music, which is better than it sounds, roast goose is less good than it sounds. For a reason that I have not been able quite to fathom, it is really delicious only in Germany. Or so I, at any rate, have found.

Whether this is because the Germans cook it better, or whether it is because it is a dish that is appropriate to the country, I am not sure. Perhaps you need to be near dense and dark pine forests, with clearings for witches and wicked stepmothers who either devour small children or send them out to find strawberries in the snow, to appreciate the comforts of roast goose.

Yet such is the theoretical allure of this bird that for a number of years I have been reluctant to contemplate the roasting of any other for our traditional and compulsive (if not compulsory) Christmas overindulgence. After all, the connotation of the word turkey, that is to say of dismal failure, seems to me to be entirely appropriate. Roast turkey is to cuisine what chipboard is to Chippendale. But roast goose was still a deceiver ever.

Now if goose were really so good, why is it that do we not eat it at other times of year? We are not very keen these days on self-denying ordinances, so the idea that we save up something delicious just for a single glorious treat once a year isn’t very plausible. If something is good we want it all the time, in and out of season, and are prepared to import it at the greatest expense from Ultima Thule if need be. So why does goose so rarely appear on menus, other than in the slightly modified form of foie gras? I do not think its size can explain everything.