Why it works: Gooseberry and biscuit share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Baked Gooseberry Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Stow gooseberries in a jar over a hot hearth or in a saucepan of water until they pulp.
Press the pulp through a coarse sieve to obtain 1 pint of juice.
Beat and strain the yolks and whites of 3 eggs.
Mix the gooseberry juice, beaten eggs, and 1½ ounces of butter.
Sweeten the mixture to taste.
Add a few crumbs of rolls or 4 ounces of Naples biscuits for consistency.
Put the mixture into a dish lined with crust.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Gooseberry + biscuittop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together12 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,009 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,874 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the gooseberry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, biscuit):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Lemonfits better
- Gooseberrythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, biscuit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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