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Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

A sauce made from gooseberries, butter, and sugar, served with mackerel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,832 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Cook

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

Finish

  1. Drain the gooseberries and mix with melted butter and sugar to soften their acidity.

  2. Press the gooseberries through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon.

  3. Stir in a piece of fresh butter before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the main body and tart flavour of the sauce once cooked and pressed.
Sugar
Balances the tartness of the gooseberries, adding sweetness.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Fresh butter
Stirred in at the end to add fresh flavour and gloss.

The step that matters

Pressing through a fine sieve. Gooseberry skins and seeds stay behind in a fine sieve, so pressing slowly with a wooden spoon gives a smooth sauce. Forcing the fruit too hard can push through bitter skin fragments and make the texture grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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