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Dessert

Gooseberry Pudding

A baked gooseberry custard made with butter, cream, eggs, and flavored with lemon peel and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Gooseberry Pudding

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Scald the gooseberries until tender, then rub them through a sieve.

  2. Sweeten the gooseberries with brown sugar.

  3. Melt the butter in the cream.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites separately.

  5. Mix the gooseberries, melted butter and cream, beaten eggs, grated lemon peel, and orange-flower water together.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and pour the mixture in.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Sprinkle grated sugar over the pudding before serving.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 flavour and tartness, and bulk out the pudding's body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, tender texture.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the pudding set with structure when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a soft, creamy texture.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the gooseberries and adds a deeper caramel note.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it curdle, weep and turn rubbery.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, cream, egg, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, egg, lemon. 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.

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