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Dessert

Gooseberry and Raspberry Cakes

A dried fruit cake made from gooseberries or raspberries mixed with sugar and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberry and Raspberry Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Gather gooseberries on a dry day and trim their tops and tails.

  2. Scald the gooseberries or place them in an earthen jar, tie it closely, and boil in a pan of water until tender.

  3. Pass the fruit through a sieve to make pulp.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the pulp with 1 pound of sugar and the beaten egg white.

  2. Whisk the mixture for 3 hours.

Dry the cakes

  1. Drop the mixture onto writing paper and dry in the sun or on a stove.

  2. For raspberry cakes, use 1 pound of sugar for each pint of raspberries and follow the same steps.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit pulp, bulk and tart flavor for the cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pulp and helps it set firm as it dries.
Egg white
Whisked into the mixture to trap air and give a light, set texture.
Raspberries
Make a second version of the cakes with their own flavor and color.

The step that matters

Whisk the mixture for 3 hours. Long whisking beats air into the pulp and sugar, building a stiff, glossy mass that holds its shape when dried. Stopping early leaves a loose mixture that spreads and dries poorly.

“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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