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Sauce

Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

A sauce made from boiled gooseberries, butter, flour, sugar, and fresh butter, suitable for mackerel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. Remove the stalks and tops from the gooseberries and wash them well.

  2. Cover the gooseberries with cold water and boil gently until tender.

  3. Drain the gooseberries and mix with melted butter and flour.

Finish the sauce

  1. For a smoother sauce, press the gooseberries through a sieve with a wooden spoon.

  2. In a saucepan, stir the pressed gooseberries with sugar and fresh butter over low heat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 main fruit body and tart flavour of the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as the fruit softens.
Sugar
Balances the gooseberries' tartness with sweetness.
Fresh butter
Adds final richness and gloss when stirred in over low heat.

The step that matters

Heating the pressed gooseberries over low heat. Gentle heat lets the flour-thickened purée warm evenly and thicken without scorching on the pan base. High heat can burn the butter and sugar and make the sauce taste bitter or catch on the bottom.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar. 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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