Name: GooseBeRRY Foot
Ingredients: 1 quart of ripe gooseberries; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 cup sugar; Yolks of 4 eggs; 3 tablespoons sugar (for meringue); Whites of 4 eggs

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

GooseBeRRY Foot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gooseberry base

Stew the gooseberries in just enough water to cover them until soft.
Rub the cooked gooseberries through a sieve to remove the skins.
While still hot, beat in the butter, sugar, and whipped yolks of the eggs.
Pile the mixture in a glass dish or small glasses.

Top and serve

Top with meringue made from whipped egg whites and sugar.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries: Provide the main fruit flavour and the bulk of the pulp once cooked and sieved.
Egg yolks: Enrich the hot fruit purée, adding richness and body to the mixture.
Egg whites: Whipped into a meringue that forms a light, airy layer on top.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart fruit and helps stabilise the whipped meringue.
Butter: Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the fruit mixture.

The step that matters

Beat in the butter, sugar, and yolks while the fruit is still hot. Hot purée gently cooks and thickens the whipped yolks when they are beaten in, giving a smooth, stable base. If the fruit has cooled, the yolks may not thicken it and the mixture can stay loose or become lumpy.

“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.