Skip to main content
Sauce

Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

A sauce made from boiled gooseberries, butter, flour, sugar, and fresh butter, suitable for mackerel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. Remove the stalks and tops from the gooseberries and wash them well.

  2. Cover the gooseberries with cold water and boil gently until tender.

  3. Drain the gooseberries and mix with melted butter and flour.

Finish the sauce

  1. For a smoother sauce, press the gooseberries through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon.

  2. In a clean saucepan, stir the pressed gooseberries with sugar and fresh butter over low heat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit flavour and the body that forms the sauce once cooked and pressed.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce slightly when mixed with the butter and fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberries to balance their acidity.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the pressed gooseberries over low heat. Gentle heat keeps the butter and fruit from separating or scorching, and the flour thickens more evenly when the mixture is not boiling hard.

“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.

More gooseberry sauce recipes

Green 3 See all 64 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes