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Dessert

Plain Gooseberry Pie

A fruit pie made with gooseberries, sugar, and a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Plain Gooseberry Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Stem and wash the gooseberries.

  2. For each cup of gooseberries, add ½ cup sugar, adjusting for ripeness.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie pan with pie dough and fill it with the gooseberries.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the berries, then add a light dusting of flour or cornstarch.

  3. Cover with the top crust, sealing the edges well, and cut several holes in the top crust.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the tart fruit that forms the filling and gives the pie its acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart berries and draws out juice as they cook.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the juices released by the berries so the filling sets rather than running.
Pie dough
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Dusting the berries with flour or cornstarch. Starch must be spread over the fruit so it can absorb the released juices as they heat. Too little leaves the filling runny, and the starch needs heat to thicken it fully.

“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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