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Gooseberry Hops

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and ginger work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gooseberry Hops

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the stem end of the walnuts into quarters, leaving the stalk end whole.

  2. Remove the seeds and thread five or six walnuts together.

  3. Layer vine leaves and walnuts in a preserving pan, covering with water.

  4. Seal the pan tightly and heat over a slow fire until scalding hot, then let it cool.

  5. Repeat until the gooseberries are a good green color.

  6. Drain the gooseberries on a sieve.

  7. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and 1 pint of water; boil and skim well.

  8. When the syrup is half cold, add the gooseberries and boil once more the next day; repeat this process three times.

  9. For drying, set the hops to dry after a week; for wet storage, add a slice of ginger to the syrup and pour it over the gooseberries after boiling.

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. Walnut + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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