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Dessert

Gooseberry and Raspberry Cakes

A fruit cake made from gooseberries or raspberries, sugar, and egg whites, dried and stored in a tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 before they are fully ripe; top and tail them.

  2. Scald the gooseberries by placing them in an earthen jar, tying it tightly, and boiling in a pan of water until tender enough to pulp through a sieve.

Make the cakes

  1. To the pulp, add 1 pound of sugar and 1 beaten egg white; mix well and whisk for 3 hours.

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

  3. For raspberry cakes, use 1 pint of raspberries and 1 pound of sugar; measure the fruit before scalding.

  4. Add 1 egg white for each pound of sugar and use the sugar while warm.

Store

  1. Store the cakes in a tin box with white paper between each layer.

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).

  2. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

  3. Egg + raspberrytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the tart flavour and the pulp that the cakes are made from.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit pulp and helps it dry into firm, sweet cakes.
Egg white
Whisked into the pulp, it adds air and helps the cakes hold their shape.
Raspberries
Add sweet, floral flavour and colour to the raspberry cakes.

The step that matters

Whisking the pulp with sugar and egg white. Whisking incorporates air and helps dissolve the sugar, so the mixture dries into a light, even cake. Mix well before drying so the sugar is fully blended into the pulp.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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