I don’t know; you wait four years for a
gooseberry recipe and then two come along at once. This year’s season for all
soft fruits seems to be never ending, so there might be a third one yet…
The gooseberry is a strange fruit, isn’t
it? It’s as lovely and tart as rhubarb, and yet very few people eat it, and it
is seldom ever seen at all in countries like the USA or France. It is certainly
a very British fruit. Jane Grigson points out in her Fruit Book, that the French don’t even have a name for it, or rather,
a name that distinguishes it from a redcurrant. What is really interesting is
that neither do we! You see, the goose-
part of gooseberry has nothing to do
with geese, because it comes from the French groseille, which means red currant, and that ultimately comes from
the Frankish word krûsil, meaning crisp
berry. Don’t say I don’t never teach you nuffink.
This is a straight-forward pudding indeed.
It is a ‘good homely pudding to make when gooseberries first come in’, says Jane.
Start off by melting together 2 ounces of butter and 4 tablespoons of soft dark brown sugar in the bottom of
a flameproof soufflé dish – if you don’t have one (as I don’t), melt them in a
pan and then tip the resulting mixture into the dish.
Arrange enough topped-and-tailed gooseberries in the dish then spread
over one batch of pound cake mixture (for the recipe, see the post #47
Pound Cake from all the way back
in 2008!). Of course, you can use other fruits: I would imagine that halved apricots
or sliced Cox’s orange pippins would work very well.
Bake at 180⁰C (350⁰F) for an hour. A little before the hour is up, sprinkle over
some granulated sugar and return the
pudding to the oven.
‘Serve with plenty of cream, and put a bowl
of sugar on the table in case the gooseberries were especially tart.’
#381 Baked
Gooseberry Pudding. This was a great pudding! The layer of tart
gooseberries was balanced well by the sweet cake topping that had developed a
lovely dark, caramelised crust. A million times better than Eve’s pudding! 9/10
