Name: Gooseberry Cream
Ingredients: 1 pint gooseberries, tops and tails removed; 2 tablespoons water; sugar, to taste; 1 pint milk (or equal parts milk and cream)

Why it works: Sugar and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberry Cream

Ingredients

1 pint gooseberries, tops and tails removed
2 tablespoons water
sugar, to taste
1 pint milk (or equal parts milk and cream)

Directions

Prepare the fruit

Place gooseberries in a jar with water and a little sugar.
Set the jar in a saucepan of boiling water and boil until the fruit is soft.
Mash the fruit into a pulp and strain it through a colander.

Finish and serve

Gradually mix in the milk (or milk and cream) until well combined.
Sweeten to taste with additional sugar.
Serve in a glass dish or small glasses.

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.

Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries: Provide the tart fruit base and the main flavour of the custard.
Milk: Adds liquid and richness, giving the custard a smooth, creamy body.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart gooseberries and balances their acidity.

“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.