Schiller's attempt to develop a new recipe had not gone smoothly. He had thought his cooking skills were already quite good, and he had watched plenty of relevant videos on short-video apps, but actual practice was nothing like what he had seen in the videos.
Preparing and cooking poultry looked simple, but was difficult in practice. Making it edible was relatively easy; making it delicious was much harder. That was true for chicken, and even more so for goose and duck. Those two were even more difficult to cook.
Duck had less fat, leaner meat, and thinner skin. The slightest mistake in preparation could ruin it completely. Goose had a peculiar flavor, and if it was not handled properly, it could be intensely gamey. Not everyone could get used to eating it.
The main issue was that Americans did not eat much of either bird. Captain America, a genuine old-school Stars and Stripes American, was naturally the same. To make sure he could enjoy it, the meat could not retain any off-flavors, yet it also had to be fragrant and fresh-tasting. It was practically Hell-level difficulty.
Still, those things were manageable. Schiller had some experience with handling poultry. What truly stumped him was the final step: how to keep the skin crisp during roasting while making the meat tender and juicy.
If the heat went too far, the skin became crisp but the meat dried out. If the meat stayed juicy, the skin softened and lost its crunch. Schiller had tried everything, from improving the goose breed to altering the oven's structure, but nothing worked. He was starting to suspect that the feng shui in the United States was bad.
The oven he used was a brick oven he had built himself, right beside the first-floor kitchen of the sanatorium.