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 ↓
Gooseberries, Bottled
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bottles
Pick off the bloom and part of the stem from the gooseberries.
Place the gooseberries in dry black glass bottles.
Drive the corks about 1 inch into the neck of the bottles.
Bottle and seal
Fill a pot with water up to the neck of the bottles and set it on the fire.
Boil the water slowly until the gooseberries turn light yellow.
Remove from heat and let cool, then drive in the corks and seal the bottles.
Store the bottles in a dry cellar.
Make tarts
To make tarts, stew the gooseberries over a hot fire for about 15 minutes until they turn light green.
For each quart bottle, add 1 pound of loaf sugar, ½ cup of water, and 1 piece of alum.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Gooseberries
- The main fruit; its firm flesh holds shape and its acidity provides the tart flavor.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it by drawing out moisture and inhibiting spoilage.
- Alum
- Helps the gooseberries keep their firm texture during cooking and storage.
The step that matters
Boil the water slowly until the gooseberries turn light yellow. Heating gently and only until the fruit changes color softens it enough to process without bursting or cooking to mush. Overheating breaks down pectin and cell walls, so the fruit loses shape and the seal may fail.
“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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