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Dessert

Gooseberry Pudding

A baked pudding made with stewed gooseberries, powdered sugar, butter, grated stale bread, eggs, and lined with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Gooseberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the gooseberries until soft. Let them cool, then mash them with a spoon.

  2. Stir 2 ounces of powdered sugar into the mashed gooseberries.

  3. In a separate bowl, cream together the remaining 2 ounces of sugar and the butter.

  4. Beat the eggs and add them to the butter and sugar mixture, alternating with the gooseberries and grated bread.

Bake

  1. Line a soup plate with puff pastry, pour in the mixture, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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 tart fruit flavour and moisture that give the pudding its body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture when creamed with sugar.
Grated stale bread
Absorbs juices and lightens the filling, giving it body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberries and dissolves easily into the batter.

The step that matters

Alternating the eggs with the gooseberries and bread. Adding the wet and dry components in portions helps the emulsion of butter, sugar and eggs stay smooth and prevents curdling, so the filling bakes evenly without separating.

“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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