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Dessert

Gooseberry Jelly

A jelly made from boiled gooseberries, alum, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Gooseberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Combine gooseberries and water in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Cook until the gooseberries are soft and pulpy.

  3. Add the piece of alum and stir well.

  4. Strain the mixture through a muslin cloth without pressing the fruit too much.

Make the jelly

  1. Measure the juice and, for every pint, add 1 pound of loaf sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches a jelly consistency.

  3. Pour the jelly into molds and cover them.

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. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 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 fruit pulp and natural pectin that help the jelly set.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and, with boiling, helps the jelly set and keep its shape.
Alum
Acts as a firming agent that helps the jelly hold its shape.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it reaches a jelly consistency. Sugar and pectin only gel when enough water has boiled off and the sugar concentration is high. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while boiling too long can make it stiff and cloudy.

“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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