Skip to main content
Dessert

Gooseberry or Apple Fool

A sweet dessert made by cooking gooseberries or apples with sugar, milk, and cream into a thick, chilled fool.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gooseberry or Apple Fool

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Strew the gooseberries or apples with 6 ounces of sugar to draw out the juice.

  2. When the fruit is tender, pulp it through a coarse sieve.

Make the custard

  1. Add more sugar to taste and mix in 1 quart of fresh milk and 1 teacup of cream.

  2. Boil the milk.

  3. Mix in 2 beaten egg yolks until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  4. Let the mixture cool before combining it with the fruit.

Combine

  1. Stir everything together until well combined.

  2. Optionally, add grated ginger for gooseberries, nutmeg and lemon rind for apples, or ½ glass of brandy.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries or apples
Provide the tart fruit base and flavour that the cream is folded into.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juice.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving the fool its smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolks in the milk. Egg yolks thicken the custard as they gently set, but if the mixture boils they can curdle and turn grainy. Keep it below a boil and stir until it coats a spoon.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, cream, ginger, nutmeg, lemon, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, cream, ginger, nutmeg, lemon, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes