Skip to main content
Sauce

Green Sauce for Goslings or Geese

A green sauce made from gooseberries, spinach or sorrel, butter, Madeira wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Green Sauce for Goslings or Geese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. Remove the tops and stems from the gooseberries and place them in a saucepan with boiling water and sugar.

  2. Stew gently until tender enough to pass through a sieve.

Prepare the green juice

  1. While the gooseberries are cooking, pound the spinach or sorrel leaves in a mortar.

  2. Place the pounded leaves in a towel and wring to extract the juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the juice to the gooseberry pulp along with butter and Madeira wine.

  2. Heat the sauce and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + madeira winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + madeira winetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + spinachtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,033 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

Green gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit base that gives the sauce its main flavour and body once stewed and sieved.
Spinach or sorrel leaves
Add green colour and a fresh, herbal sharpness to the sauce through their juice.
White sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the gooseberries with sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Madeira wine
Contributes aroma and a rounded, slightly sweet depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Stew the gooseberries until fully tender. Gooseberries must be cooked until soft enough to pass through a sieve; undercooked fruit stays fibrous and yields a coarse, thin pulp instead of a smooth sauce.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, madeira wine. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes