For a couple of years, my gooseberry bushes did okay. They were planted in shade, they were establishing themselves. Then a storm took out two of the trees on the other side of the street, and my gooseberry bushes exploded with fruit, because OMG! SUN! Then, however, came the Roofinators, followed by a tragic application of weedkiller by someone who was careless (not me! not M! Such are the hazards of Urban Pretend Farming!). There was no joy in Alasville that night those several summers.
This year, the problem has largely been the lingering effects of the chemical damage and the mixed cold/heat/drought cycle we have had through the growing season. Nonetheless, I got a pretty good crop of them, and the last of the fresh ones are holding out in the crisper. I’ve mostly used the fresh for rødgrød med fløde, occasionally with some ground cherries thrown in. However, I have always been looking for something other than gooseberry jam or gooseberry pie to use up these yummy darlings, and so I went down the savory lane. I’m familiar with lingonberries as a member of the Norwegian diaspora and cranberry as an American, so why the hell not gooseberries with meat?
And The Sauce Adventure Begins
A little web searching, a conversation with Rhys ap Ishmæl Llygad Odd, a lot of time digging through Medievalcookery.com, and I had an idea of where I wanted to start. The gist of the gathered research as applied: Medieval recipes frequently serve gooseberry, as part of a savory dish, with poultry, beef, or fish, while modern recipes I reviewed tend more towards pork and fish. As Rhys noted, they all tend toward fattier meats, and a few of the pre-1604* recipes I looked at specifically mentioned using pork fat as part of the preparation. After digging about, I selected the two recipes I wanted to use to guide me in making a very simple sauce for meat, something that can be made on a weeknight after work or for a feast for 50 people.
Behold, a Sauce is Made
Pork with Gooseberry Sauce and an Arugula Salad
The basic recipe for this comes from this site. It took about 5-7 minutes to prepare the sauce, once the gooseberries had been topped and tailed. The top/tail can be done in the time the pork chop is cooking up.
It’s served on a lovely bit of pork from Kettle Range, my locally preferred butcher. I can’t say I followed the sauce recipe precisely (a little more soy sauce than was called for, a little less sugar), but that shouldn’t shock anyone. The arugula salad (arugula, cheese, a lemon & oil dressing of some kind) is also from Kettle Range, part of one of their ready made meals I occasionally get. Even with the use of the soy sauce, I could still feel comfortable serving this plate at an SCA event, because there were plenty of examples of some kind of umami-adding component in period and in the various recipes I consulted. Someone from the Prince of Transylvania’s court would recognize this food.
“beef with gooseberry” and the Rest of that Arugula Salad
This dish, though it looks so very similar to the prior plate, is different. The recipe, beef with gooseberries, comes from The Prince of Transylvania’s Court Cookbook, hosted on the ever-splendid Medieval Cookery site. It’s served on a “pan-broiled” steak from Kettle Range and with the last of the arugula salad. The medieval recipe is very simple, basically prep your beef, cook your gooseberries in your beef water, pour the sauce on your beef.
This time, rather than pour the dressing on the salad and call it done, I actually dressed the salad. While that seems a minor difference, think of it like this: finely shredded cabbage with a tablespoon of slaw dressing poured across it is a cabbage salad. To get coleslaw, you need to mix the dressing and the cabbage. The two things, while compiled of the same ingredients, have different tastes and mouthfeels. Presumably, the acids in the dressings do the same things to the veg as the lime juice does to the shrimp in a ceviche.
But I digress. One of the reasons I mentioned the actual butcher is to emphasize that this is the best quality meat I am able to buy going into this food experiment. The meat is organic, and while I don’t think I used a chop from heritage pork this time**, it is something I sometimes can get there, so all the pork has to be very good to compete with that heritage pork (or else we would all just wait until the heritage pork is in stock, right?). My gooseberries were without applied pesticides ever and untouched by weed killer this year, so they were the best I could plate, too.
But this sauce was a disappointment as written. Not enough umami left in the pan, no added umami, no anything but mashed gooseberries in beef drippings. It was not good enough for my beautiful steak.
I have a lot of appropriate options for pre-1604 ingredients around here, but most of them are on the sour end, like vinegar or verijus. I thought about wine, and will try that in future, but I was not going to open a whole bottle for this. So it was Worcestershire sauce as a stand-in for liquamen , the closest bit of umami I had open. I used less of this than of the soy sauce a couple nights before, so there was a much more pronounced flavor of the gooseberry. It was nice, but I have to say, I preferred the pork and gooseberry, and will be playing around with umami additions for the sauce. That made it a better fit, but Ryhs called it correctly when he advised using pork.
I am planning to make a third version, with chicken thighs and wine as the extra bit of sauce flavor. I can’t decide if I want to try white or red; I guess it will depend on what I feel like opening that night. 😉
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*Scadian wankery: I am a Tudor in persona and will try not to use items after 1603 (the year Elizabeth I died) to document, but I will go up to about 1630 for personal practice and inspiration. And, you know, sometimes there just isn’t any other guidance.
**I used a chop from my monthly packet, and I did not check the label, I just grabbed a chop. I don’t think they include the meat from heritage breeds in their meat shares–I can’t imagine it’s financially feasible. But I wanna pretend it might have been, okay? It’s not like the SCA is not chock-full of pretend. 😉
Ars Gratia Artis 
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