Gooseberry sauce

A sharp green sauce for oily fish

Gooseberry sauce is a cooked sauce made from the unripe, tart berries. It is spoonable, pale green and sour, and it is served with fish and meat that are rich in fat. Mackerel is the classic partner, and the sauce is also served with grilled or fried fish, pork, chicken and goose.

The sauce depends on the berry. The early pickings of the gooseberry are sour and suited to cooking, and the larger, sweeter fruit is kept for pies, fools and crumbles. A good sauce therefore starts with small, firm, green berries that will break down in the pan.

A pairing with a name in French

The English pairing of gooseberry and mackerel has a French counterpart. The French name for the gooseberry, groseille a maquereau, means mackerel berries, because the fruit was used in a sauce for mackerel in old French cooking. The name shows the same pairing in both kitchens, but it does not show which came first.

The author of one modern account says the dish began in England, and links it to medieval contact between England and Normandy. That is an attractive story, but it is an unproven claim and is recorded here as such. Historical gooseberry sauce recipes are cited in that account from Elinor Fettiplace's receipt book of 1604 and Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery of 1847. The page does not reproduce the sauce text from those books, so this entry does not quote them.

Cooking the berries

The cooked method is simple. The berries, water, wine or vinegar and sugar go into a saucepan, and the mixture cooks until the berries pale and soften. The cook crushes them against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon, which is what turns the fruit into a sauce rather than a stewed fruit. Salt and pepper are added at the end of cooking.

A smooth sauce is blended and sieved, then reheated in a clean pan. A textured sauce is served as it is. Butter beaten in until glossy and cream added at the end are both optional, and they change the mouthfeel rather than the flavour. Sugar can be added to taste, but the sauce is meant to stay sharper than apple sauce.

An uncooked variant

The same berries can be made into a raw sauce. The author describes halved berries mixed with chopped mint and sugar, covered and left to macerate for several hours. Leaving the sauce uncooked keeps the berries green. The cooked and raw versions answer different questions: the cooked sauce is smooth and soft, while the raw one keeps the shape of the fruit.