Skip to main content
Dessert

Gooseberry Sauce

A sauce made by boiling gooseberries, sweetening with powdered sugar, and combining the resulting pulp with butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Gooseberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare 1 pint of butter sauce.

  2. Boil 1 pound of green gooseberries in boiling water for 5 minutes in a small saucepan.

  3. Drain the gooseberries and transfer them to a small saucepan.

  4. Add ½ pint of white wine and 3 ounces of powdered sugar to the gooseberries.

  5. Gently cook the gooseberries.

  6. Rub the cooked gooseberries through a fine sieve.

  7. Add the resulting pulp to the butter sauce.

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 + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sauce + white winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together819 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Green gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit flavour and the pulp that gives the sauce its body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberries so the sauce balances sweet and sour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma while helping the gooseberries soften during cooking.
Butter sauce
Forms the rich, creamy base that the gooseberry pulp is stirred into.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked gooseberries through a fine sieve. Pushing the softened fruit through a fine sieve removes skins and seeds, leaving a smooth pulp. Skipping or rushing this leaves a grainy sauce.

“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.

More gooseberry sauce recipes

Green 3 See all 64 →

You might also like

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