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Dessert

Berry Fool

A fruit dessert made from boiled gooseberries, sugar, butter, eggs, baked into a pie and served with ladyfinger biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and biscuit are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,009 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Berry Fool

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 gooseberries

  1. Scald the gooseberries in water until soft.

  2. Drain them in a sieve and let cool.

  3. Work the gooseberries through the sieve.

Make the mixture and bake

  1. Add sugar, butter, and beaten eggs; mix well for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with ladyfinger biscuits as a delicious addition.

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 + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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 pulp and the tart flavour that gives the fool its character.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the gooseberries.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, softer texture.
Eggs
Thicken and set the mixture as they heat, giving the fool body.

The step that matters

Bake the mixture. The eggs set gradually as they heat. Overbaking causes them to curdle and turn grainy, so the mixture should be checked near the end of the 30 minutes and removed once just set.

“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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