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A Pine Sauce, or Puree of Vegetable Marrow

A puree of vegetable marrow simmered with veal broth, seasoned with salt and pepper, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Pine Sauce, or Puree of Vegetable Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and seed the vegetable marrow, then slice it with the mild onion.

  2. Combine the sliced marrow and onion in a pot with the veal broth or gravy.

Cook and strain

  1. Stew the mixture gently for nearly an hour.

  2. Add salt and cayenne or white pepper to taste near the end of cooking.

  3. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Heat the strained sauce again and stir in the rich cream when it boils.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled chicken, stewed or boiled veal, lamb cutlets, or other delicate meats.

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.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Veal + white peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Vegetable marrow
Forms the bulk of the puree, softening as it stews and giving body once strained.
Veal broth or gravy
Provides liquid for stewing and savory depth that carries the flavor of the marrow.
Rich cream
Adds fat and smoothness, rounding the texture of the strained sauce.
Mild onion
Adds aromatic flavor that mellows during the long, gentle stew.

The step that matters

Stew gently and strain fully. Gentle, long simmering softens the marrow evenly so it can be pressed through a sieve into a smooth puree. Rough boiling can break down unevenly and leave fibrous pieces that the sieve cannot fully catch.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, cream, butter. 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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