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Dessert

Gooseberry Pie

A fruit pie made with gooseberries, sugar, butter, flour, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove the tops and stems from the gooseberries and wash them.

  2. Fill a pie plate lined with crust with the gooseberries.

Assemble and bake

  1. Sprinkle ½ cup sugar over the berries if they are very sour.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour on top.

  3. Cover with a top crust and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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

Gooseberries
Provide the fruit filling and the sharp, tart flavour that defines the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the very sour berries and balances their acidity.
Flour
Thickens the berry juices as they bake so the filling sets rather than running.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling as it melts over the berries.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the sugar over sour berries. Gooseberries vary in sourness, and sugar balances their acidity. Tasting the berries first helps you decide how much sweetness the filling needs.

“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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