Name: Gooseberry Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart gooseberries; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup butter; ½ cup sugar; 2 cups bread crumbs; 3 eggs

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Gooseberry Pudding

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.

Make the pulp

Stew the gooseberries with 1 cup of sugar for 1 hour.
Rub the mixture through a colander to make pulp.

Bake and serve

Add ½ cup of butter, ½ cup of sugar, 2 cups of bread crumbs, and 3 beaten eggs to the pulp.
Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.
Serve with powdered sugar or a sauce.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 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 fruit base and tart flavor that the pudding is built around.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set into a soft, custard-like texture when baked.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and give the pudding body so it holds its shape after baking.
Butter: Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb to the baked pudding.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart gooseberries and adds flavor to the pudding.

“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.