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Dessert

Gooseberry Custard

A custard made from boiled gooseberries, butter, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Gooseberry Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gooseberry base

  1. Trim the gooseberries and place them in a saucepan with water and butter.

  2. Boil until very soft, then pass through a sieve.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and gradually add them to the strained gooseberries with the sugar.

  2. Stir over low heat until thickened, but do not allow to boil.

Serve

  1. Let cool and serve in custard glasses.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Gooseberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and, when cooked and sieved, the body of the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they set, giving the custard its rich, smooth texture.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the fruit base.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberries and helps balance their acidity.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thickened, but do not allow to boil. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. If the mixture boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy custard that cannot be rescued by stirring.

“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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