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Dessert

Modern Cookery

A baked pudding made with gooseberries, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, water, biscuits, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

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 base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Combine the bread crumbs and whisked eggs in a bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake gently for 30 to 45 minutes.

Make the fruit

  1. For a finer pudding, work the fruit through a sieve.

  2. Mix the sieved fruit with crushed Naples biscuits and double the amount of butter.

  3. In a saucepan, cook the green gooseberries with sugar and water for 10 to 12 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the mixture into a soft, custard-like structure as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the egg and give the pudding its body.
Gooseberries
Provide tart flavor and moisture for the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the gooseberries and balances their tartness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake gently for 30 to 45 minutes.. Gentle heat lets the egg proteins set slowly into a smooth custard. High heat can overcook the eggs, causing curdling, toughness, or a dry, over-browned top.

“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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