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Gooseberry Turnovers
Make some good light crust. Roll it out two or three times, then leave it a quarter of an inch in thickness. Stamp it out in rounds with a cup, plate, or small basin, and lay a few gooseberries, which have been stewed with sugar on one half of each round. Turn the other half over the fruit, fasten the edges securely, and bake on buttered tins in a moderate oven. Serve on a napkin, with sifted sugar. Time, about a quarter of an hour to bake. Probable cost, 1d. each.
A plain fruit turnover with almost no measurements — the technique is all in the pastry and in how wet the filling is. A few notes make it repeatable.
- "Good light crust"Probably a puff or rough puff paste; the instruction to roll it out "two or three times" most likely refers to folding and turning to build layers, though the recipe does not spell this out. All-butter shop-bought puff pastry, rolled to the specified quarter inch, will do the same job.
- Moderate ovenRead as 350–375F (175–190C). Puff pastry benefits from the higher end of that, and a quarter of an hour is only enough if the pastry is thin and the oven is properly up to heat — expect 18–25 minutes for a good colour.
- Stew the fruit first, and stew it dryThis is the hinge. Gooseberries release a great deal of liquid; if the stewed fruit goes in wet, the juice will boil out, weld the turnover to the tin and leave the base raw. Cook the berries with sugar until thick and jammy, then cool completely before filling.
- Sugar quantityNone is given. Green cooking gooseberries are sharp: roughly 4–6 oz sugar to 1 lb fruit, adjusted to taste. Riper, redder berries need less.
- Size and yield"A cup, plate, or small basin" spans anything from a 3-inch to an 8-inch round. A 4-inch cutter gives a comfortable single-serving turnover; one pound of pastry makes about eight.
- SealingDamp the edge with water, press with a fork or crimp, and cut a small vent in the top. Chill the assembled turnovers for 20 minutes before baking so the layers set rather than slump.
- Buttered tinsBaking parchment is more reliable here — buttered tins encourage any escaped sugar to caramelise hard onto the sheet.
- Serving"On a napkin" means a folded linen cloth on the serving dish, which absorbs steam and helps keep the pastry crisp. "Sifted sugar" means finely powdered sugar passed through a sieve; modern caster or icing sugar will serve, dusted over once the turnovers have cooled a little.
- Cost1d. each — a penny apiece in late Victorian money, which places these firmly among the everyday puddings rather than the company dishes.
Gooseberries were among the most widely grown British garden fruits of the nineteenth century, grown in enormous quantity in cottage plots and competed over at gooseberry clubs in the industrial north, where growers weighed single berries against each other. Because the fruit crops heavily in a short early-summer window and is too sour to eat raw when green, much of it went to cooked uses: fools, pies, tarts and turnovers, though ripe dessert varieties were eaten raw. The turnover itself is simply a pie made portable, sturdy enough to be eaten out of hand — a round of paste folded over filling — and versions appear across Europe under different names. Cassell's places this in the general run of cheap family puddings, and the costing of a penny each is the point: it is a recipe aimed at a household counting the expense of every dish.