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Vegetable Marrow Soup

A soup made from buttered marrow, flour, stock, milk, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Vegetable Marrow Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the vegetable marrow into pieces and chop finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a soup pot.

  3. Add the chopped marrow.

Make the soup

  1. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir until it thickens.

  2. Pour in the stock and milk, then add the pepper.

  3. Cook slowly on the back of the stove for one hour.

  4. Remove from heat and add salt.

  5. Strain the soup into a tureen.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 body of the soup and gives it its main vegetable flavour and bulk.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the marrow soften and carry flavour.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, rounded body to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and marrow and stirred until the mixture thickens. Adding liquid too early can leave lumps, because starch granules clump before they can disperse evenly in the liquid.

“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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