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Savoury Vegetable Marrow

A stuffed vegetable marrow filled with tomatoes, onions, ham, and breadcrumbs, baked in buttered bags.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Savoury Vegetable Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the vegetable marrow in half, not lengthwise.

  2. Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water, then in cold water to remove the skins, and chop roughly.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped tomatoes, minced onions, lemon juice, salt, pepper, butter or suet, minced ham or bacon, minced parsley, and bread crumbs.

  2. Bind the mixture with the beaten egg yolk and fill the two halves of the marrow.

Cook

  1. Place each half in a separate well-buttered bag, mixture side up, and cook for 45 minutes.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Vegetable marrow
Forms the edible shell that holds the filling while it cooks.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that flavour the filling as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid from the tomatoes and onions, giving the filling body.
Egg yolk
Binds the filling so it holds together when spooned into the marrow.
Butter or suet
Adds fat for richness and a softer, moister texture.
Onions
Contribute savoury sweetness and aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Binding the filling with egg yolk. Egg yolk sets when heated and holds the crumbs and chopped vegetables together. If the mixture is too loose, it will run out of the marrow and cook unevenly, so mix it until evenly coated before filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, lemon, pepper, butter, ham, parsley, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, lemon, pepper, butter, ham, parsley, bread. 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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