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Dessert

Gooseberry Pudding

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

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 ↓

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 fruit

  1. Stew the gooseberries until soft.

  2. Let the gooseberries cool.

  3. Mash them finely with a spoon.

  4. Stir in ¼ cup powdered sugar.

Make the filling

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together the remaining ¼ cup powdered sugar and the butter.

  2. Add the grated bread to the butter and sugar mixture.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  4. Alternate the mixture with the mashed gooseberries.

Bake

  1. Line a soup plate with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined plate.

  3. 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 main fruit flavour, tartness and moisture for the filling.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and tenderness through creaming with the sugar.
Grated stale bread
Lightens the filling and absorbs moisture from the fruit.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps cream the butter smoothly.

The step that matters

Alternate the mixture with the mashed gooseberries. Layering the wet fruit with the creamed butter and eggs helps the batter blend evenly without splitting. Mashing the fruit finely and letting it cool first keeps the filling smooth and prevents excess liquid from making the pudding soggy as it bakes.

“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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