No. 3177

Gooseberries with Cream

Groseilles Vertes a--la Creme

Pick a few handfuls of still green but firm gooseberries; put them into a copper pan with two spoonfuls of hot water and a handful of sugar; let dissolve while tossing, and then press through a sieve; return the puree to the pan, sweeten and reduce to the consistency of a light marmalade, then pour it into a tart dish and leave till cold. Cover it with sweetened whipped cream flavored with lemon, smooth nicely, and decorate the surface with cream pushed through a cornet. The cream can be mixed in with the puree if so desired.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a gooseberry fool in two layers rather than one, and it depends entirely on using hard, underripe fruit. The measurements are given in handfuls, so treat the proportions below as a working starting point.

Use unripe fruitGreen, firm gooseberries are high in both acid and pectin, which is what lets the purée set to a marmalade consistency without added thickener. Ripe or frozen dessert gooseberries will stay loose and taste flat under the cream.
Not a copper panCopper reacts with fruit acid and can leach into the food. Unlined copper preserving pans were standard for sugar and fruit work in Ranhofer's day; use stainless steel or another non-reactive pan.
Working quantitiesA few handfuls is roughly 1 lb (450 g) of gooseberries; two spoonfuls of water is about 2 tablespoons; a handful of sugar around 1/2 cup, with more added after sieving to taste. Green gooseberries take a surprising amount of sugar, so sweeten the purée in stages.
SievingPress the softened fruit through a fine sieve to remove skins, seeds and the tops and tails; this may be why the recipe never asks you to trim the berries first.
ReducingCook the sweetened purée down over moderate heat, stirring, until a spoon drawn through leaves a clear track — the same test as for jam. It will firm further as it cools, so stop slightly short.
"Cornet"A paper piping cone. A piping bag with a star tip does the same job; the cream must be whipped to firm peaks to hold the pattern.
Flavored with lemonZest rather than juice gives the perfume without slackening the cream. Fold in the finely grated zest of half a lemon with the sugar before whipping.
Dish and yieldA shallow glass or ceramic dish of about 8 inches shows the two layers to advantage. This quantity serves six as a light dessert; assemble no more than a few hours ahead, as the acid purée will begin to weep into the cream.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its cold entremets section is essentially a French pastry chef's repertoire adapted to American produce. Gooseberries under cream belong to a much older northern European habit of cooking hard green fruit with sugar and folding it into cream — the English called the result a fool, and the French name groseille à maquereau is traditionally explained by the pairing of the tart berry with mackerel. Ranhofer's version is the restaurant refinement of that domestic dish: the purée reduced properly to marmalade thickness, set in a tart dish, masked with whipped cream and finished with piped decoration, with the older, simpler stir-it-all-together method offered only as an afterthought in the final line. Gooseberries never became a market fruit in America on the scale they reached in Britain, and they are largely absent from later American dessert cookery.