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To Make Gooseberry Fool
1016. Take two quarts of unripe gooseberries, set them on the fire in one pint of water; when they begin to simmer, turn yellow, and begin to plump, throw them into a colander or sieve to drain; then press the pulp through a sieve into a dish; make it pretty sweet, and leave it till cold. Take two quarts of new milk, and four yolks of eggs beaten with a little nutmeg, stir it softly over a slow fire; when it begins to simmer take it off, and by degrees stir it into the pulp. If made with cream, the eggs may be omitted, and more gooseberries added if preferred thicker; a little brandy is a great improvement. It should be served cold. This quantity is sufficient to fill three ordinary glass dishes. Or, by some it is preferred to rub the gooseberries through a colander only, or merely to mash them after draining, so as to retain all the skins.
An eighteenth-century-style fool built on a stirred egg custard rather than whipped cream, scaled for a large table. The whole thing hinges on taking the custard off the heat at the first tremor and cooling both parts before they meet.
- The hinge: do not let the custard boilYolks in milk with no starch will scramble a few degrees above the point where the mixture thickens. Cook it in a heavy pan over low heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon (around 175-180F), then pull it off and strain it. "When it begins to simmer take it off" is later than most cooks would risk today.
- Combine cold, and slowlyAdding warm custard to acidic gooseberry pulp invites curdling. Cool both, then stir the custard into the pulp a ladleful at a time, not the other way round.
- QuantitiesTwo quarts of gooseberries is a volume measure of whole fruit, perhaps 2 1/2 to 3 lb, yielding several cups of pulp. Two quarts of milk with only four yolks makes a very thin custard by modern standards; the cream version, or a custard with eight to ten yolks per quart, gives the texture most people expect from a fool.
- Unripe gooseberriesHard green fruit is what the recipe wants, for acidity and pectin. Top and tail them. Ripe dessert gooseberries make a sweeter, flabbier fool and need less sugar.
- Sweetening"Pretty sweet" means sweeter than you think while warm, because chilling mutes sugar and the custard adds none. Sugar the hot pulp so it dissolves, then taste again once cold.
- The cream variationThe recipe says only that with cream the eggs may be omitted and more gooseberries added if a thicker fool is wanted. The modern treatment is to skip the cooking and fold lightly whipped double cream into the cold sweetened pulp, which is far more forgiving.
- Brandy and nutmegA tablespoon or two of brandy for the full quantity is enough; more thins the mixture. The recipe beats the nutmeg with the yolks, so grate it fresh at that stage rather than into the finished fool.
- Yield and servingThe recipe says the quantity fills three ordinary glass dishes. Chill at least three hours and serve with thin crisp biscuits.
- Skins or no skinsThe sieved version is smooth and pale; the colander-only or mashed version keeps skins and seeds, giving a rougher texture and more colour. Both are traditional, and the second is quicker.
Fools are among the oldest surviving English sweet dishes, recorded from the sixteenth century, and gooseberry is the classic fruit for them because the hard green fruit ripens in early summer and its sharpness cuts rich dairy. The name is generally traced to the sense of "fool" as something trifling or of no consequence, in the same spirit as trifle itself; the frequently repeated link to the French fouler, to crush or press, is folk etymology rather than documented. Many older fools, like this one, are custard-based, with eggs and new milk standing in for cream. The all-cream fool that dominates today is essentially the shortcut the recipe itself offers in passing. Gooseberries were a serious amateur passion in nineteenth-century Britain, particularly in Lancashire and Cheshire, where gooseberry clubs held weigh-in shows for the largest berries, and a book like this could assume its readers had more of the fruit than they knew what to do with.