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Dessert

Gooseberries in Syrup

Preserved gooseberries soaked in a boiled sugar and water syrup, optionally flavored with ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Gooseberries in Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Drain the gooseberries and place them on a sieve.

  2. Boil 1 pound of sugar in 1 pint of water to make a thin syrup.

  3. Skim the syrup well.

Cook the gooseberries

  1. When the syrup is half cold, add the gooseberries.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add a slice of ginger to the syrup while boiling (for wet storage).

  4. Repeat this process two more times.

Finish

  1. Pour the ginger-infused syrup over the gooseberries when cooled.

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. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
The main fruit, which softens and takes on the sweet syrup as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as the syrup concentrates, helps preserve it.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the syrup.

The step that matters

Repeat the boiling and cooling. Each heating and cooling cycle lets the syrup soak further into the fruit and concentrate the sugar, which helps the gooseberries keep their shape and stay preserved.

“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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