Skip to main content
Baking

Modern Cookery

A baked gooseberry pudding made with bread crumbs, eggs, and butter, topped with a cooked gooseberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

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.

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Combine the bread crumbs and whisked eggs in a bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake gently for 30 to 45 minutes.

  4. For a finer pudding, work the fruit through a sieve and mix with crushed Naples biscuits and double the amount of butter.

  5. In a saucepan, cook the gooseberries with sugar and water for 10 to 12 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the crumbs and set into a custard as the pudding bakes.
Fine bread crumbs
Give body and soak up moisture so the pudding holds together.
Green gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit flavour and the moist base of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the cooked gooseberries and balances their acidity.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Bake the pudding gently. High heat cooks egg proteins too quickly, causing them to curdle and turn the pudding grainy and watery instead of smooth and 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.

More gooseberry pudding recipes

Rice 10Baked 9 See all 112 →

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes