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Dessert

Gooseberry Charlotte

A dessert made by boiling gooseberries with sugar, pressing into a mold lined with sponge biscuits, setting, and serving with custard or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Gooseberry Charlotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove tops and stalks from the gooseberries, then wash and drain them.

  2. Boil the gooseberries with the sugar until reduced to a pulp.

  3. Press the mixture through a coarse sieve.

Assemble and set

  1. Cut the sponge biscuits into thin slices and line a round mold with them.

  2. Pour the fruit mixture into the mold and cover with more sponge cake slices.

  3. Place a cover and a weight on top, and let it set for 10 to 12 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn it out before serving and pour custard or cream around it.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 base that cooks down into the filling's flavor and body.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it cooks down, helps thicken the pulp into a set filling.
Sponge biscuits
Form the lining and cover that hold the fruit filling in its mold shape.

The step that matters

Pressing the cooked fruit through a sieve. Cooked gooseberries must be reduced to a smooth pulp with no large pieces or skins, because the filling sets firm enough to hold its shape only when it is uniform.

“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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