Name: Gooseberry Cakes
Ingredients: 2 cups green gooseberries; 1 pound powdered sugar; 2 egg whites

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberry Cakes

Ingredients

2 cups green gooseberries
1 pound powdered sugar
2 egg whites

Directions

Make the pulp

Place the gooseberries in a jar and submerge it in a saucepan of boiling water.
Simmer until the fruit is soft, then press it through a sieve.

Shape and dry

Mix the pulp with the powdered sugar and beaten egg whites until well combined.
Form the mixture into small round cakes on sheets of paper.
Dry the cakes in a warm place before storing them in tin boxes.

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 + 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

Green gooseberries: Provide the tart fruit pulp that gives the cakes their flavour and body.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the pulp and helps it firm up as the cakes dry.
Egg whites: Bind the pulp together so the mixture holds its shape when formed.

“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.