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Gooseberry Fool
The name of this dish, like many other names of dishes, comes to us direct from the French.
Spell the word Foule as it was originally and we find the foule signifies pressed. The gooseberries are pressed before being mixed with cream.
Green gooseberries; to every pint of pulp add 1/2 pint of cream and 1/2 pint of milk, sugar to taste. Cut the tops and tails off the gooseberries; put them into a jar, with 2 tablespoonfuls of water and a little brown sugar; set this jar in a saucepan of boiling water, and let it boil until the fruit is soft enough to mash. When done enough, beat it to a pulp, press through a sieve, and stir to every pint the above proportion of cream and milk. Ascertain if the mixture is sweet enough and put in plenty of sugar, or it will not be eatable; and in mixing add the cream very gradually to the gooseberries. Serve in a glass dish, or in small glasses. This, although a very old-fashioned and homely dish, is, when well made, very delicious, and, if properly sweetened, a very suitable preparation for children. Gateau de Riz One heaping tablespoonful powdered gelatine, 3 tablespoonfuls of water, 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar, 2 cupfuls of milk, 2 ounces of ground rice, 1/2 cupful of raspberry purée, few drops of red coloring. Grind the rice and mix it into a smooth paste with a little of the milk, then put the remainder into a saucepan to heat. When warm, add ground rice and stir over the fire until boiling. Add sugar and cook for a few minutes, stirring all the time. Remove the saucepan from the fire and add the raspberry purée, which has been made by rubbing either preserved raspberries or the fresh fruit through a sieve. Dissolve gelatine with the water and strain it into the other mixture. Color with a few drops of red coloring and pour into a mold which has been rinsed out with cold water. Serve with cream or custard sauce.
Two desserts run together here: a gooseberry fool built on a cooked, sieved purée, and a molded ground-rice pudding set with gelatine. Both are straightforward, but the proportions assume ingredients and vessels that need translating.
- The hinge: sweeten the pulp before the dairy goes inSweetening is the hinge -- green gooseberries are aggressively acidic, and the recipe is right that under-sweetening makes the dish inedible. Note that sugar goes in twice here: a little brown sugar during the cooking, and the main sweetening after the cream and milk are stirred in. Tasting and adjusting while the pulp is still hot and concentrated is the easier moment to judge it.
- QuantitiesA pint of pulp takes somewhere in the region of 1 to 2 lb of topped and tailed green gooseberries, depending on how much is lost in the sieve. Assuming American pints, that is 2 cups pulp to 1 cup cream and 1 cup milk. Expect about six servings.
- The jar in a saucepanThis is a bain-marie, used because direct heat scorches fruit in a thin-bottomed pan. A heavy saucepan over low heat with the two tablespoons of water works as well; stir and watch it.
- Green gooseberriesThese are hard, underripe fruit picked in early summer, sour and firm rather than sweet. Frozen gooseberries are the usual substitute; ripe dessert gooseberries make a sweeter, pinker fool and need less sugar.
- Adding the cream graduallyCold cream poured into hot acidic purée can curdle. Cool the pulp first, then whisk the cream in a little at a time. Many modern versions whip the cream to soft peaks and fold it through for a lighter set; the milk here makes a looser, more old-fashioned pouring fool.
- ChillingThe recipe says nothing about cooling the fool. Refrigerate at least two hours before serving in glasses.
- Ground rice, for the gateauGround rice is rice milled to a fine grit, coarser than rice flour and not interchangeable with it in texture. Slaking it with cold milk before it meets the hot milk is what prevents lumps.
- GelatineA heaping tablespoon of powdered gelatine is roughly a full envelope and a half — enough to unmold cleanly. Soften it in the three tablespoons of cold water for five minutes, then dissolve it over gentle heat before straining it in; boiling gelatine weakens its set.
- The moldRinsing with cold water rather than oiling leaves a film that releases the pudding without greasing the surface. Chill four hours or overnight, and dip the mold briefly in warm water to turn out.
The etymology offered here is the traditional one, repeated in nineteenth-century cookbooks: that fool derives from the French fouler, to press or crush. Most modern lexicographers doubt it and connect the word instead to the same sense of foolishness that gave us trifle. Whether fools are older than the name's disputed history is settled: the word appears in the late sixteenth century, while recipes for crushed fruit folded into cream are found from the seventeenth century onward, and gooseberry became the standard version because the bushes were common in kitchen gardens and the fruit ripened in glut. The dish is a cheap one honestly — a quantity of sour fruit, thinned dairy, and a great deal of sugar, requiring no oven and no skill beyond patience at the stove. The gateau de riz beside it does similar work with grander vocabulary: ground rice and gelatine stretched with a spoonful of raspberry and a few drops of coloring into something that could be turned out of a mold and set on a table.