Chef Thomas
Anchovy Sauce
A proper white sauce sharpened with pounded anchovy, the old Georgian trick for waking up a piece of poached fish or a slice of roast lamb on a Sunday in spring.
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Gooseberry Sauce
Created by Chef Thomas
A sharp, soft purée of green gooseberries stewed with butter, the old English answer to oily mackerel and rich meats, and one of the few sauces that tastes exactly like the few weeks it belongs to.
Sauces & Condiments
British
Special Occasion
10 min
Active Time
15 min cook•25 min total
YieldServes 4 to 6, about 300ml
Gooseberries come and go in a hurry. There's a window in late June and into July when the bushes are heavy with hard green fruit, and if you blink you miss it. The market has them for a fortnight, maybe three weeks in a generous year, and then they're gone until next summer. So when they appear, you buy them. You don't ask what for. You just bring them home and decide later.
This is what I make first. A sharp green sauce, barely sweetened, the kind that sits on the side of a plate and does the job no other condiment can quite manage. It cuts through oily fish like a clean knife. It tames the fat of roast pork. It sits next to a piece of grilled mackerel and makes the whole plate make sense. There's a reason the bird is called a gooseberry: someone, centuries ago, worked out that the sourness of the fruit was the best possible answer to the richness of a goose, and the name stuck.
It takes fifteen minutes once the topping and tailing is done, which is the only fiddly bit and not really fiddly at all if you put the radio on. The fruit collapses in butter and a spoonful of sugar, and you're left with something pale green and softly tart, with little flecks of skin holding their shape. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. Taste as you go. Some gooseberries are sharper than others, and the sugar should answer the fruit, not bury it.
I wrote it down in the notebook the first year I made it: "Gooseberries. Mackerel. Friday. The garden full of greenfly." It didn't need more than that.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
hard green gooseberries
Quantity
400g
topped and tailed
unsalted butter
Quantity
30g
caster sugar
Quantity
2 tablespoons, plus more to taste
water
Quantity
1 tablespoon
fine sea salt
Quantity
pinch
nutmeg (optional)
Quantity
small grating
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| hard green gooseberriestopped and tailed | 400g |
| unsalted butter | 30g |
| caster sugar | 2 tablespoons, plus more to taste |
| water | 1 tablespoon |
| fine sea salt | pinch |
| nutmeg (optional) | small grating |
Equipment Needed
- •Small heavy-bottomed saucepan with a lid
- •Wooden spoon
- •Small knife for topping and tailing
Instructions
- 1
Top and tail the fruit
Sit at the kitchen table with a small knife and a bowl. Pinch off the dry stalk at one end and the little brown nub of flower at the other. It's a slow job and there's no shortcut for it. Put the radio on. The gooseberries should be hard and green and almost translucent against the light, the kind that squeak slightly when you press them.
Choose hard, sharp gooseberries for sauce, not the softer dessert varieties. You want the sourness. The sugar comes later. - 2
Stew gently in butter
Melt the butter in a small heavy-bottomed pan over a low heat. Tip in the gooseberries, the water, and the sugar, then a small pinch of salt. Stir once and put a lid on. Leave them alone for five minutes or so. You'll hear them start to hiss and pop as the skins give way.
- 3
Cook to a rough purée
Take the lid off and stir. The gooseberries will have begun to collapse, releasing their pale green juice. Cook on uncovered for another five to ten minutes, stirring now and then, until the fruit has broken down into a soft, fluffy mush. Some skins will hold their shape. That's fine. This isn't meant to be smooth.
If you prefer a finer sauce, push it through a sieve with the back of a wooden spoon. I almost never bother. The texture is part of the pleasure. - 4
Season and taste
Take the pan off the heat. Taste it. It should be sharp enough to make you blink, but not so sharp that it stings. If it's too fierce, add another pinch of sugar and stir it through. Go slowly. You're not making jam. You want the sauce to keep its edge, because the whole reason it exists is to cut through something rich. A small grating of nutmeg, if you like. Then taste again.
- 5
Serve warm or cool
Spoon into a small bowl or a stoneware jug and serve alongside grilled mackerel, roast pork, a piece of duck, or anything fatty enough to need a sharp green companion. It's good warm from the pan, and equally good at room temperature an hour later. A dollop on the plate, not a flood.
Chef Tips
- •Use the hard, sour green gooseberries meant for cooking, not the sweeter dessert varieties that come later in the season. The whole point of this sauce is the sharpness. If your fruit is too sweet, you've lost the argument before you've started.
- •Top and tail them properly. The little dry stalk and the brown flower end at the bottom both need to come off. Some people skip it. Don't. They turn bitter and woody in the cooked sauce and you'll notice them.
- •This sauce was made for mackerel above all else, but it's just as good with grilled herring, roast pork shoulder, a piece of crisp-skinned duck, or even a simple fillet of trout from the river. Think of it as the sour green answer to anything that needs cutting through.
- •Frozen gooseberries work perfectly well out of season if you've had the foresight to bag some up in July. Don't bother defrosting. Tip them straight into the pan with the butter and sugar.
Advance Preparation
- •The sauce can be made up to three days ahead and kept covered in the fridge. Bring back to room temperature or warm gently before serving.
- •It freezes well for up to three months. Defrost overnight in the fridge and stir through before serving. The texture stays loose and rough, which is exactly what you want.
- •If you find yourself with a glut of gooseberries in July, top and tail a kilo of them, bag them in 400g portions, and freeze them raw. You'll have sauce on tap until Christmas.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 70g)
Calories
95 calories
Total Fat
5 g
Saturated Fat
3 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
2 g
Cholesterol
13 mg
Sodium
30 mg
Total Carbohydrates
13 g
Dietary Fiber
3 g
Sugars
11 g
Protein
1 g
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