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Dessert

Gooseberry Pudding, Boiled

A boiled gooseberry pudding made with gooseberries, milk, butter, flour, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Gooseberry Pudding, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gooseberry purée

  1. Barely cover the bottom of a saucepan with water and add the gooseberries.

  2. Cook slowly until tender.

  3. Rub the gooseberries through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour, then cook well.

  2. Add the milk and stir until it boils.

  3. Mix in the gooseberry purée and sugar, then heat through.

  4. Serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, once puréed, the body of the pudding.
Butter
Forms the fat base with the flour, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth base once cooked.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, thickened by the flour when brought to a boil.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the gooseberries.

The step that matters

Cook the flour into the butter before adding the milk. Cooking the flour in the melted butter lets the starch swell and lose its raw taste. Stirring until the mixture boils then thickens it evenly, so lumps are less likely and the sauce turns smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, sugar. 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.

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