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.