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Gooseberries, Compote of

A compote made by boiling gooseberries with syrup and vinegar, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 385 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Gooseberries, Compote of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Top and tail the gooseberries, ensuring they are not very ripe.

  2. Pour boiling water over the gooseberries, then plunge them into cold water mixed with vinegar to maintain color.

Cook the fruit

  1. Make a pint of syrup and bring it to a boil.

  2. Drain the gooseberries and add them to the boiling syrup.

  3. Simmer gently until the fruit is tender and pulpy but not broken.

Serve

  1. Dish the gooseberries on a glass dish.

  2. Boil the syrup for 2-3 minutes, then pour it over the gooseberries and serve cold.

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. Syrup + vinegartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the fruit, whose firm pectin-rich flesh holds its shape when gently simmered.
Syrup
Sweetens the fruit and carries its flavour, while keeping the berries moist during cooking.
Vinegar
Its acidity in the cold water helps the gooseberries keep their bright green colour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Boiling hard would split the skins and break the fruit to mush. A gentle simmer lets the berries soften through while the skins stay intact, so they hold their shape in the syrup.

“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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