Gooseberry is of course a long-standing slang term for an unwanted third person at a lovers' meeting, but a good ripe gooseberry can stand comparison with most other soft fruits.
The eating quality of gooseberries cannot be predicted from their colour or hairiness. They are still small and hard at the moment and these are ideal for cooking and baking with.
Although traditionally mixed with custard and cream to form a fool, a gooseberry sauce is also a good accompaniment to grilled mackerel.
A syllabub in the truest form of the word was originally a drink with a foamy head. Rumour has it that a primitive method of making syllabub, ensuring a good foam, was to partly fill a jug with sweetened, spiced wine or cider and to milk a cow directly into it!
In this recipe, I have replaced the wine with cordial. The flavour of gooseberries is complemented by elderflowers (perhaps because they are both in season at the same time).
I make my own cordial by immersing heads of elderflowers in a sugar syrup solution with lemons and citric acid and then straining it through a muslin cloth after a couple of days (the smell is very intense and I would recommend covering it and leaving in a garage or shed!).
I then freeze it in ice cube trays for use throughout the summer, diluting it with fizzy water. As the elderflowers are almost finished now, you can use a bought elderflower cordial for this recipe.
Gooseberry and Elderflower Syllabub
Ingredients serves 2
Compote:
150g gooseberries, topped and tailed
50ml elderflower cordial
Syllabub:
50ml elderflower cordial
125ml whipping cream
vanilla pod
Method
1 For the compote, cook the ingredients together in a pan over a low heat for 10 minutes. Leave to cool.
2 Place the cordial and cream together in a mixing bowl. Scrape in the seeds of the vanilla pod. Whisk until the mixture thickens and holds its shape.
3 Either layer up the syllabub with compote in glasses, or fold the compote into the syllabub pour into glasses and chill for 1-2 hours.
Serve with something sweet and crunchy such as a brandy snap or a crisp biscuit. If you have a sweet tooth, you may wish to add a little icing sugar to the cream mixture.
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