"Goose has been a Christmas tradition in our family for generations," Susan Pinsky said. The Pasadena resident learned to cook the bird from her Prague, Czech Republic-born grandmother.
"I tried cooking it myself once, but my father complained that it was dry. He was right," Pinsky said.
Now she purchases roasted goose from Bristol Farms for Christmas, and often Thanksgiving. But she still serves it with a blueberry sauce made from a family recipe.
Eating goose isn't cheap.
Pinsky figures she will spend about $200 this Christmas to feed goose to a gathering of 20 family members.
Bristol Farms' precooked goose is $11.99 a pound, and it also sells frozen uncooked birds for $4.69 a pound. A fresh goose -- typically 8 to 12 pounds -- sells for $6.59 a pound at Whole Foods Markets.
"Goose is pricier and always will be. They are harder to grow and more expensive to feed than other poultry," said Jim Schiltz of Schiltz Goose Farm Inc. in Sisseton, S.D.
Whereas it takes about 2 1/2 pounds of feed to grow a pound of turkey, geese require more than 7 pounds, said Schiltz, whose company processes about 200,000 geese a year and is America's largest producer.
Turkey is still the No. 1 holiday bird -- Americans consume about 1,000 times more turkeys than geese.
Despite the goose-centric literary and cultural traditions of Britain and Europe, America developed into a nation of turkey eaters. The Pilgrims ate turkey at Thanksgiving for good reason. Turkeys are native to North America. Colonists found them plentiful, easy to catch and good to eat.
The daunting nature of cooking goose also is a major factor holding back the fowl's popularity.
"My mother complained about how difficult it was to cook," Pinsky said. It makes a mess in the kitchen. Goose sheds 2 to 3 pounds of grease as it cooks. It requires a deep rack and a deeper pan. The fat splatters and smokes.
"Cooking a goose is a big event," Schiltz said. "It takes a long time and people are afraid of it."
That was true even in Dickens' time. In "A Christmas Carol," the Cratchit children become excited when they smell the family's goose cooking at the nearby bakery. Poorer families in Victorian England lacked ovens large enough to cook the bird, so they would pay for oven space at the local bakeries.
"People don't have as much cooking knowledge or time as they have in previous generations," said Duane Wulf, a professor of meat science at South Dakota State University
That's one reason cooked goose holiday dinners sell well at Bristol Farms: Shoppers get the traditional holiday meal but none of the mess.
Schiltz also sells a cooked goose. It is a frozen, roasted bird available online or by phone. Selling for $33 to $40, depending on the size, the goose takes 90 minutes to reheat. The company also sells sliced smoked goose breast.
Pinsky said good goose is worth the price.
"It's not unlike duck but with a fuller taste and a little tougher texture," she said. "And you don't eat as much goose as you do turkey because it is so rich. There really is nothing like it."
jerry.hirsch@latimes.com
