Skip to main content
Dessert

Gooseberries in Imitation of Hops

Gooseberries preserved in a ginger-lemon syrup, simmered with vine leaves and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Gooseberries in Imitation of Hops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the gooseberries into quarters and remove the seeds, leaving them whole at the stalk end.

  2. Thread a strong piece of thread through the bunch of gooseberries and tie a knot to secure them together.

Green the gooseberries

  1. Place cold spring water in a pan with vine leaves at the bottom.

  2. Layer the gooseberries in the pan with vine leaves between each layer and on top.

  3. Cover the pan tightly and heat on a slow fire until just scalded, then let cool.

  4. Repeat the heating process until the gooseberries are a good green color, then let cool again.

Make the syrup

  1. Drain the gooseberries and prepare a thin syrup by boiling 1 pint of water with 1 pound of sugar, ginger, and lemon peel until clear.

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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, whose firm flesh holds its shape through gentle heating and syrup.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the thin syrup that the fruit is finished in.
Ginger
Adds a warm aroma to the syrup that carries into the fruit.
Lemon peel
Adds fragrant citrus oils and a bright aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Heat only until just scalded, and repeat gently. Prolonged or hard heating softens the gooseberries and dulls their green color, so each heating should stay slow and brief.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes