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Gooseberry Sauce

A sauce made from stewed gooseberries, sugar, water, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gooseberry pulp

  1. Combine gooseberries, sugar, and boiling water in a porcelain saucepan.

  2. Stew gently until tender.

  3. Rub the gooseberries through a sieve with a potato masher.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter and flour over heat in another saucepan, stirring until blended.

  2. Gradually add 1 pint of boiling water, salt, and white pepper to the butter‑flour mixture.

  3. Let the sauce boil briefly.

  4. Stir in the gooseberry pulp.

  5. Serve with roast or baked gosling.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 flavour and the pulp that thickens and gives the sauce its body.
White sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the gooseberries for a sweet-tart flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and boiling water into a roux.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour before adding the water. The flour must be cooked smoothly into the melted butter so it blends without lumps. Adding the boiling water gradually while stirring keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, sauce. 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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