Name: Ripe Gooseberry Pie
Ingredients: 2 cups ripe gooseberries; 1 pie crust; 1 egg white; sugar to taste

Why it works: Egg and sugar 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 ↓

Ripe Gooseberry Pie

Ingredients

2 cups ripe gooseberries
1 pie crust
1 egg white
sugar to taste

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Top and tail the gooseberries.
Line a pie dish with the crust.
Brush the crust with egg white.

Fill and bake

Fill the dish with the gooseberries and sweeten to taste.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) with or without an upper crust.

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.

Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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: Provide the tart fruit filling that gives the pie its main flavor and body.
Pie crust: Forms the structure that holds the filling while it bakes.
Egg white: Brushed on the crust to help it brown and seal against moisture.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart gooseberries and balances their acidity.

“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.