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Gooseberry Sauce for Green Geese

A sauce made with sorrel, butter, flour, green gooseberries, cayenne pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberry Sauce for Green Geese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Wash the sorrel and press out the juice using a cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and sorrel juice until thick.

  3. Scald the green gooseberries until very tender.

  4. Add the gooseberries to the sauce.

  5. Add cayenne pepper (if desired).

  6. Adjust seasoning with salt.

  7. Serve hot.

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. Sorrel + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sorrel + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sorrel + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sorrel leaves
Provides the sharp, tangy flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and juice.
Green gooseberries
Adds tartness and body once softened into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and sorrel juice until thick. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter before liquid is added, or the sauce can taste raw and form lumps. Stirring constantly as the juice goes in keeps it smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Sorrelthe original
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper. 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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