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Dessert

Gooseberry Pudding

A baked pudding made with gooseberries, sugar, bread, butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Gooseberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Boil the gooseberries with half the sugar and a little water until soft.

  2. Let the mixture stand for a day.

Make the custard

  1. Toast the bread in the butter until light brown.

  2. Add the milk to the toasted bread and boil together until thick.

  3. Once cool, mix in the beaten egg yolks, remaining sugar, and gooseberries (without juice).

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the mixture into a well-greased mold or china dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with the reserved gooseberry juice.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, folded in whipped, lighten and set the pudding structure.
Butter
Fat that toasts the bread, adding richness and a golden, nutty flavour.
Milk
Liquid that softens the toasted bread and cooks into a thick, custard-like base.
White bread or zwieback
Starch that absorbs the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Green gooseberries
Fruit that adds tartness to balance the sugar and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when fully whipped and folded gently; overmixing deflates them, so the pudding bakes up less light and airy.

“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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