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Gooseberry Sauce
(England. For mackerel.) Trim and mash a pound of green gooseberries, add sugar to flavor, a spoonful of cornstarch, and the juice of a lemon. Cook 10 minutes, add a pinch of cinnamon and a spoonful of butter, simmer until thick, and press through a sieve.
A sharp fruit sauce for oily fish, and one of the few English sauces that still earns its place at a modern table. The original assumes you know what a spoonful is and how sour green gooseberries are; here is the rest.
- Green gooseberriesThese are hard, unripe berries picked in early summer, not the soft ripe dessert sort. They are intensely tart and hold their acidity through cooking, which is the whole point against mackerel. Frozen ones work; if you can only find ripe fruit, expect a sweeter, flatter sauce and cut back the sugar.
- Top and tail"Trim" means removing the dry flower remnant at one end and the stalk at the other, with scissors or a small knife. It matters because the sauce is only sieved at the end, and stems make the pulp stringy.
- The spoonfulsAn unqualified 'spoonful' in a sauce like this is usually taken to be a tablespoon, though the recipe never says. One tablespoon of cornstarch to a pound of fruit gives a thick, spoonable sauce; use two teaspoons if you want it looser.
- Sugar to flavorWith genuinely green gooseberries this lands around 3 to 4 tablespoons for a pound of fruit. Add it in stages and taste — the sauce should stay assertively sour, since its job is to cut the richness of the mackerel, not to be a compote.
- Add a little waterCornstarch in a nearly dry pan can scorch before the fruit collapses. If the mashed berries look dry, start with two or three tablespoons of water over low heat and let them break down before the starch goes in.
- Slurry the cornstarchMix it with the lemon juice or a spoonful of cold water first. Dropped in dry it will seize into lumps that no sieve removes gracefully.
- Butter last, off the boilThe recipe already puts it near the end. Stir it in once the sauce has thickened and keep the heat low so it emulsifies rather than splitting into a greasy film.
- Yield and servingRoughly a cup to a cup and a half, enough for about four fillets. Serve warm, not hot, alongside grilled or baked mackerel; it also suits herring or a rich pork chop.
The pairing of mackerel with gooseberry is old in northern Europe: the two are in season together in early summer, and the acid of the unripe fruit answers the oiliness of the fish in the same way lemon or sorrel does. English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward commonly treat gooseberry sauce as the accompaniment to mackerel, and this version, with its cornstarch and cinnamon, looks like a later tidying of a plainer older sauce of stewed fruit and butter.