Skip to main content
Dessert

Gooseberries in Imitation of Hops

Gooseberries are simmered with vine leaves and water, then cooled and served in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,147 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberries in Imitation of Hops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. Cut the gooseberries at the stalk end into quarters, leaving the blossom end whole.

  2. Remove all seeds.

  3. Thread five or six gooseberries together with a needle and strong thread, tying a knot to secure them.

Green them

  1. In a pan, place cold spring water and a handful of vine leaves at the bottom.

  2. Layer the gooseberries with plenty of vine leaves between each layer, covering the top with vine leaves.

  3. Cover the pan tightly to prevent steam from escaping and set it on a slow fire.

  4. Remove from heat as soon as the mixture is scalding hot and let it cool completely.

  5. Repeat the heating process until the gooseberries turn a good green color, then let them cool again.

  6. Drain the gooseberries in a sieve.

Make the syrup

  1. Prepare a thin syrup by boiling 1 pound of sugar in 1 pint of water.

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. Walnut + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Largest green walnut gooseberries
Provide the fruit that is threaded, greened and later served.
Common loaf sugar
Sweetens the thin syrup that the fruit is prepared in.

The step that matters

Repeat the heating process until the gooseberries turn a good green color. Gentle heating with vine leaves draws color into the fruit, but heating too hard or too long can soften the gooseberries and dull their color. Keeping the pan covered on a slow fire and cooling between rounds protects texture and color.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes