Name: Green Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pint green gooseberries; water (as needed); 2 teaspoons sugar; 1 ounce butter; ⅓ cup sherry

Why it works: Butter and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Green Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Boil the green gooseberries in a little water until tender.
Mash the gooseberries and pass them through a sieve.
In a pan, combine the pulp with sugar, butter, and sherry.
Simmer for five minutes.

Serve

Serve with roast goose or duckling.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,505 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,141 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green gooseberries: Provide the tart base and pulp that forms the body of the sauce.
Sugar: Balances the tartness of the gooseberries with sweetness.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sherry: Adds aroma and a mellow, slightly sweet acidity to the sauce.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.