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Gooseberry Catsup

A sweet and spicy sauce made from boiled gooseberries, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gooseberry Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vinegar, currants, onions, gooseberries, and chillies until soft.

  2. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve over the remaining ingredients.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Tart fruit that breaks down into the sauce and gives it its body.
Vinegar
Sharp acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps keep it stable.
Brown sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and tart fruit.
Raisins
Adds sweetness and a soft, thick texture to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until the fruit is fully soft. Gooseberries must be cooked until they break down completely, because the sieve can only press through soft pulp. Undercooked fruit stays lumpy and leaves the ketchup thin in body and uneven in texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, raisin, mustard, onion, allspice, ginger):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, raisin, mustard, onion, allspice, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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