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Dessert

Canned Cape Gooseberry Pudding

A bread pudding made with canned gooseberries, buttered bread slices, optional sugar, baked and served with cream or hard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Canned Cape Gooseberry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a pudding dish.

Assemble

  1. Layer the bottom with buttered bread slices.

  2. Add a layer of canned gooseberries; sprinkle with sugar if not sweetened.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is nearly full.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with sugar and cream or hard sauce.

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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the soft, absorbent body that soaks up the fruit juices as the pudding bakes.
Canned gooseberries
Supply the tart fruit flavour and the moisture that softens the bread layers.
Butter
Greases the dish so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness to the buttered bread.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberries and balances their acidity.

The step that matters

Layering until the dish is nearly full. Leaving a little headroom keeps the juices from bubbling over during baking, and enough bread between fruit layers helps the pudding hold its shape rather than turning soggy throughout.

“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.

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