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Dessert

Modern Cookery

A baked gooseberry pudding made with bread crumbs, eggs, and crushed biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

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.

Prepare the base

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Combine bread crumbs and whisked eggs in a bowl.

Make the gooseberry filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine green gooseberries, sugar, and water.

  2. Cook for 10 to 12 minutes until gooseberries are soft.

  3. For a finer pudding, work fruit through a sieve and mix with crushed Naples biscuits and double the butter.

Bake

  1. Pour mixture into a baking dish and bake gently for 30 to 45 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the crumbs and set the pudding as they cook, giving it a custard-like structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, light crumb.
Green gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit flavour and moisture that cooks down into the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberries and adds moisture to the fruit.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer texture and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Bake gently. Baking at too high a heat makes eggs set quickly and can curdle or toughen the pudding, so a gentle oven keeps the texture smooth and tender.

“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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