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Gooseberry Fool
Stew gooseberries until soft, add sugar, and press through a colander (earthen is best), then make a boiled custard, or sweeten enough rich cream (about one gill to each quart), and stir carefully into the gooseberries just before sending to table. -Mrs. L. S.. W.
A two-ingredient dessert whose success rests entirely on the fruit being cooked down to a thick, sharp purée before any dairy goes near it. The original assumes you know what a boiled custard is and leaves the proportions loose.
- A gillA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz). The phrase "about one gill to each quart" is genuinely ambiguous in the original: it may mean a gill of sugar to each quart of cream, or a gill of cream to each quart of fruit, which would be far too little to make a fool. Later versions commonly use roughly equal volumes of purée and cream, or two parts purée to one of cream.
- GooseberriesGreen, hard, underripe gooseberries are what this wants — they are acidic enough to stand up to cream and they break down readily. Fresh ones appear briefly in early summer; frozen are sold year-round and work as well, since they are cooked anyway. Roughly 2 lb of fruit yields about a quart of purée.
- Stewing the fruitAdd only a splash of water, a couple of tablespoons for 2 lb; gooseberries release plenty of their own. Cook covered until the skins burst and collapse, 10 to 15 minutes, then sugar to taste — 3/4 to 1 cup per 2 lb is normal for green fruit.
- Why earthenwareMrs. L. S. W. gives no reason for preferring an earthen colander, but earthenware does not react with fruit acid, whereas the tinned iron and copper of the period could and could taint the flavour. Any stainless, nylon or plastic sieve is fine now; avoid bare aluminium or unlined copper.
- Boiled custardIn this book that means a stirred pouring custard, not a baked one — yolks, milk or cream and sugar cooked over low heat, stirring, until it coats a spoon, around 175-180F. It must not actually boil or the eggs curdle.
- Cream, if you skip the custard"Rich cream" is heavy cream. It can go in liquid, giving a loose pouring fool, or be whipped to soft peaks and folded in for the modern version. Whipped is more stable and holds several hours.
- The hingeCombine at the last minute and fold rather than stir. The purée must be completely cold; warm fruit thins whipped cream and can split a custard, and prolonged mixing turns the whole thing a uniform dull green instead of leaving streaks.
- Yield and servingA quart of purée with cream serves six to eight in small glasses. Serve cold, with a plain crisp biscuit or shortbread.
The fool is one of the oldest surviving English desserts, recorded from the sixteenth century onward, and gooseberry is its classic form. The name is often traced to the French fouler, to crush or press, though that derivation is traditional rather than documented; the older and simpler explanation is that a fool, like a trifle, was named as a thing of no consequence. Its appearance in Buckeye Cookery (1877) alongside other Anglo-American fruit dishes reflects how thoroughly gooseberry bushes had followed settlers into Midwestern kitchen gardens, where they were valued for cropping early and heavily. The book offers an alternative — custard or plain sweetened cream.