cook someone's goose

Ruin someone, upset someone's plans. For example, He thinks he'll get away with stealing my idea, but I'm going to cook his goose. The origin of this phrase has been lost, but there are numerous fanciful theories; one concerns a besieged town that displayed a goose to show it had enough food, causing the attackers to set it on fire. The first recorded use of this colloquial phrase was in 1851.