Roast goose
The Christmas Goose is a festive meal on Christmas Eve or on the 1st or 2nd Christmas Day.
Origin
The origin of this dish of roast goose goes back to the Catholic custom of St. Martin's goose, which is eaten before the beginning of Advent Lent on November 11. On Christmas Eve this Lenten season ends, and it is again prepared a goose as festive roast.
Originally, the roast goose in the Middle Ages the walls of St. Martin's also on September 29, St. Michael's, eaten in honor of the Archangel Michael. The traditional Christmas food was since the Middle Ages, the Mettenmahl or Mettensau. This festive meal was a roast pork that was eaten after the Christmas on December 25. The 24th was in the Middle Ages a strict fast day, and it was only allowed fish, especially the Christmas carp to be eaten. The common people and peasants could afford as a solid food only blood and liver sausages Mette sausages, Weihnachtssau or Weihnachter were called. Part of this " Holy Supper " was repealed along with Educated and fruit bread for the deceased in the previous year and to the poor. With growing prosperity during industrialization finally Mettenmahl was replaced by the much more festive roast goose, yet are traditionally up to the present in many families sausages or roast pork eaten as a Christmas dinner.
Legends
On the origin of the Christmas goose says a legend that in 1588 England's Queen Elizabeth I at Christmas time just ate a goose, when the news came that the Spanish Armada was defeated. From joy at this victory and as a sign of good omen, they should have then declared the goose for Christmas dinner. The custom is said to have then spread to the European continent. Nowadays the traditional Christmas roast is in the UK is no longer the goose, but the turkey.
Another version says that putatively influential foodies of dreary Christmas carp to have appeared too little festive and was therefore made to ensure that geese could be considered a fish because of their affinity for water within the meaning of the commandments. As fish were in Lent to the allowed foods, has been designed to be very generous in the Middle Ages the term fish. So not only mussels, crabs and whales were designated as fish, but also other species that have adapted to their habitat waters. These included, for example, ducks, puffins, beaver and even geese. These interpretations have been controversial but doubted even at that time. For example, put the Emperor Frederick II in question, if one could call Weißwangengänse than fish. After former notion fish grew in mussels, and Frederick II doubted that this species of goose, the homes to only in the autumn on the coast of Northern Europe and their breeding behavior, therefore, could not be observed, such as fish grew and you could call it that, therefore, also.
Another legend says that white is the color of innocence and purity. Since the Christ child is the symbol of innocence and purity, the goose dinner by the first Christians was about 400 nC introduced in Rome. Later, other animals were allowed to be eaten with white feathers or white meat.
Yet another legend combines the traditional dinner of roast goose for Christmas with the attack of the Gauls on the city of Rome in the year 390, the geese of the city would have sounded the alarm, so Marcus Manlius Capitolinus was able to take the necessary measures of defense. Since then, the geese enjoyed special veneration by the Romans ( Holy geese of Juno ) So fell when the early Christians were looking for a symbolic worship in the form of food for the child of God, the election immediately to the goose. However, since the goose in the Middle Ages was a not very common domesticated fowl places came later, especially in Northern Europe, the tradition, instead of roast goose to eat carp.
Preparation
In most cases the goose with apples, chestnuts, onions or prunes is filled. Typical spices for roast goose, in addition to salt and pepper mainly sagebrush and marjoram. Traditional side dishes are cabbage, dumplings and a bound sauce from the pan juices. Roast goose on Alsatian style is served with sausage stuffing and sauerkraut. The side dishes of the Swedish Martinsgans are Brussels sprouts and apple sauce.
One of the oldest recipes for a festive roast goose comes from the cookbook daz book of good SPISE ( 1350 ):
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This is a good filling plug a goose on a spit and cook the mesentery. Take four eggs, hard boiled and give crumbs of refined bread and cumin and a little pepper and saffron, and take three cooked chicken livers. Stir it with vinegar and chicken broth, but not too acidic, and peel onions and cut them thin and then do them in a pot, do this lard or water and let it boil, to make them soft. And take sour apples, cut out the cores. When the onions are cooked give the apples to the fact that they are soft, and give the mixture and the apples and onions in a pan and when the goose is fried, so they decompose, put it in a nice jar and pour over the sauce and servier it.