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Vegetable Marrow Soup

A soup made with vegetable marrow, butter, spices, stock, and cream, finished with fried sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Vegetable Marrow Soup

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marrow

  1. Pare and cut the vegetable marrow into quarters, removing the seeds.

Cook the marrow

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the marrow, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and sugar.

  3. Cook over medium heat for a few minutes, then add enough stock or water to cover the marrow.

  4. Let it stew gently until tender, then rub it through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add boiling stock to achieve a thick gruel consistency.

  2. Stir in the boiling cream or milk, and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Heat until hot and serve with fried sippets.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Vegetable marrow
Forms the main body of the soup and breaks down into a smooth purée when stewed and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavours of the spices as the marrow begins to cook.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the finished soup.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the mild, earthy flavour of the marrow.

The step that matters

Rubbing the stewed marrow through a fine sieve. Cooked marrow is soft and fibrous; pressing it through a fine sieve breaks down the remaining fibres and removes lumps, giving the smooth texture the soup depends on.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, sugar, cream):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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