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Dessert

Excellent Gooseberry Fool

A chilled gooseberry dessert made with boiled gooseberries, sugar, spices, and thickened cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Excellent Gooseberry Fool

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the gooseberries

  1. Place the gooseberries in a stone jar with sugar and water.

  2. Put the jar on a warm stove or in a saucepan of water over the fire.

  3. When the fruit is tender, press it through a colander or sieve.

  4. Add sufficient sugar.

  5. Let it cool.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream or milk with lemon rind, cloves, cinnamon, coriander, angelica seeds, and sugar.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with flour and mix into the cream mixture.

  3. Cook gently until thickened.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine with the cooled gooseberry puree.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Cinnamon + coriandertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + angelicatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit base and, once softened and pressed, the main body of the fool.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture as they cook gently, giving the fool a smooth, custard-like body.
Cream or new milk
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a soft, smooth texture.
Flour
Stabilises the custard, helping it thicken without curdling.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart gooseberries and balances their acidity.

The step that matters

Cook gently until thickened. Egg yolks set at moderate heat and can curdle or scramble if overheated. Gentle cooking, with the flour helping to stabilise, keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, lemon, clove, cinnamon, angelica, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, lemon, clove, cinnamon, angelica, egg. 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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