Name: Gooseberries, Stewed
Ingredients: gooseberries; ¼ cup castor sugar; 1 cup water; whipped cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Gooseberries, Stewed

Ingredients

gooseberries
¼ cup castor sugar
1 cup water
whipped cream

Directions

Place the gooseberries in a lined saucepan.
Add ¼ cup of castor sugar and 1 cup of water.
Stew slowly for 30 minutes.
Let cool and serve topped with whipped cream.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries: Form the fruit base that softens into the stewed sauce.
Castor sugar: Sweetens the fruit and balances the gooseberries' natural tartness.
Whipped cream: Adds cool, rich fat that contrasts with the warm, tart fruit.

“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.