I've noticed a lot of recipes from the 1700s to the early 1900s called for gooseberries, now it's largely ignored.
I'm guessing you come from a US perspective? If so there was a ban in the US on the cultivation of plants of the ribes genus, which the gooseberry and blackcurrant belong to from the early 1900s on to battle white pine blister rust. source: EVALUATION OF FUNGICIDES FOR WHITE PINE BLISTER RUST CONTROL ON BLACK CURRANT, 2004