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Gooseberry Pancakes

Pancakes made with gooseberries, butter, eggs, sugar, cream, breadcrumbs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the gooseberries and fry until tender, then mash them.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.

  4. Mix in sugar, cream, bread crumbs, and flour.

  5. Combine the mixture with the mashed gooseberries.

  6. Cook in a saucepan over heat until thickened.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in fresh butter and sift sugar on top before serving.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 tart fruit flavor and moisture that fills the pancakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set and bind when cooked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the mixture as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb excess moisture from the fruit and help thicken the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives it body so it holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and browns the pancakes as they fry.

The step that matters

Cook in a saucepan over heat until thickened. Egg proteins set when heated, so cooking gently while stirring keeps the mixture smooth. Too much heat can scramble the eggs and leave lumps.

“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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