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Dessert

Gooseberry Wafers

A wafer made from ripe gooseberries, sugar, and egg white, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg 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 ↓

Gooseberry Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pulp

  1. Place the ripe gooseberries in a jar and submerge them in a pan of water.

  2. Boil the gooseberries, then strain them through a sieve.

  3. In a bowl, combine the strained gooseberries with sugar and the beaten egg white. Mix well and spread the mixture thinly on dishes.

Dry and shape

  1. Dry in a cool oven (300°F / 150°C) until set.

  2. Cut into shapes and place before the fire to harden slightly.

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 + eggtop 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 fruit flavour and the pectin-rich pulp that sets into the wafer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pulp dry into a firm, glossy sheet.
Egg white
Binds the pulp and adds structure so the wafer holds its shape when set.

The step that matters

Drying in the cool oven. The mixture must dry slowly at low heat until set. Higher heat can scorch the sugar and brown the wafers before the moisture has left, leaving them sticky or bitter.

“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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