Skip to main content
Dessert

Gooseberry Custard

A custard pie made with gooseberries, puff pastry, milk, sugar, cornflour, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Gooseberry Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fruit and milk

  1. Make puff pastry and line a pie dish, creating a double row around the edge.

  2. Stew the gooseberries with ½ lb of castor sugar until the skins are tender, then strain through a sieve.

  3. Scald 1 pint of milk.

Make the custard

  1. Mix 1 tablespoon of cornflour with cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the paste to the boiling milk and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Gradually mix in ¼ lb of castor sugar and 2 oz of melted butter while beating the mixture.

  5. Add the beaten yolks of 6 eggs.

  6. Fold in the mashed gooseberries in small amounts.

  7. Fold in the whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the lined pie dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25 to 30 minutes.

  3. Serve in the pie dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as it sets.
Egg whites
Whipped to give the filling lightness and a airy texture.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard that holds its shape.
Gooseberries
Provide tartness and fruit flavour that balances the sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg whites, which gives the filling its lightness. Stirring hard would deflate the foam and make the pie dense.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes