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Dessert

Gooseberry Pool

A dessert made by boiling gooseberries, mashing them, and mixing with milk or cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Gooseberry Pool

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. Cut the tops and tails off the gooseberries.

  2. Place them in a jar with 2 tablespoons of water and a little moist sugar.

  3. Set the jar in a saucepan of boiling water and boil until the fruit is soft enough to mash.

Make the pulp

  1. Once soft, mash the gooseberries and work the pulp through a colander.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in ½ pint of milk or equal parts milk and cream for every pint of pulp.

  2. Taste and add plenty of sugar to ensure sweetness.

  3. Gradually mix in the milk or cream with the gooseberry pulp.

  4. Serve in a glass dish or small glasses.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

Green gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit base and the pulp that gives the fool its body.
Milk
Dilutes the pulp and adds creamy richness to the mixture.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture that softens the fruit's sharpness.
Sugar
Balances the gooseberries' tartness and adds sweetness to taste.

The step that matters

Work the pulp through a colander. Gooseberries must be cooked until fully soft, then pressed through a colander to remove skins and seeds; unsmooth pulp leaves a gritty texture in the finished fool.

“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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