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Gooseberry Custard

A custard made from boiled gooseberries, butter, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,832 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gooseberry Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Boil the gooseberries in water until soft, about 15 minutes.

  2. Add the butter and pulp the gooseberries through a sieve.

Make the custard

  1. Stir in the sugar and egg yolks over low heat until thick, without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve in a glass dish or custard glasses.

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. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Walnut + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 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 and tartness, and become the pulp that gives the custard its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and balances the gooseberries' natural tartness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they gently set with heat, giving it a rich, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the yolks over low heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gently setting their proteins. If the mixture gets too hot, the yolks scramble into lumps and the custard cannot be smooth again.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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