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Dessert

Gooseberry Sauce

A sauce made from green gooseberries, water, butter, ginger, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gooseberry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. Scald the gooseberries in water until tender but not broken.

  2. Drain the gooseberries on a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Once the liquid is cold, use it to make ½ cup of thick melted butter.

  2. Stir in the gooseberries, ginger, and lemon peel.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + gingertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 main body of the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Grated ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice that complements the tart fruit.
Grated lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and a little extra sharpness.

The step that matters

Scalding the gooseberries. Scald them only until tender but not broken. Overcooking causes the skins to split and the fruit to lose its shape and texture, which makes the sauce dull and mushy rather than fresh and tart.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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