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Dessert

Gooseberry Custard

A custard made from boiled gooseberries, eggs, and sugar, optionally thickened with milk and yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberry Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil and pulp the gooseberries.

  2. Beat the eggs and egg whites together.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the pulped gooseberries with the beaten eggs and sugar.

  2. Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens.

  3. For a larger quantity, add milk, egg yolks, and an additional egg white.

Serve

  1. Serve warm or chilled.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and tartness, and body once pulped.
Eggs
Thicken the mixture on gentle heat and give the custard its set and richness.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the custard set, adding body without much richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberry pulp and balances its acidity.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, and high heat or neglect can scramble the eggs into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.

“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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