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Gooseberries in Imitation of Hops

Preserved gooseberries threaded and simmered with vine leaves, then sweetened in a ginger-lemon syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gooseberries in Imitation of Hops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. Cut the gooseberries into quarters and remove the seeds, leaving them whole at the stalk end.

  2. Thread a strong needle with a knot at the end. Run the needle through the bunch of gooseberries, tying a knot to secure them together.

Green them

  1. Place cold spring water in a pan with vine leaves at the bottom.

  2. Layer the gooseberries with vine leaves in between each layer, covering the top with vine leaves.

  3. Cover the pan tightly and set it on low heat until just scalded, then let it cool. Repeat the heating process until the gooseberries turn a good green color, then let them cool again.

  4. Drain the gooseberries.

Make the syrup

  1. Prepare a thin syrup by combining 1 pint of water with 1 pound of fine sugar, a slice of ginger, and a lemon peel cut lengthwise.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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

What each ingredient does

Large green gooseberries
Form the main body of the preserve and provide the tart fruit flavor.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in the syrup, helps preserve it and give it body.
Vine leaves
Lie between and over the fruit during gentle heating, keeping the berries separated and evenly heated.

The step that matters

Repeated gentle scalding. Heating just to scalding and cooling again softens the fruit and sets its color gradually. Boiling hard would break the berries apart and leave them dull and soft.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger. 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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