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Vegetable Marrow Soup

A soup made from vegetable marrow, onions, and seasonings, served with fried bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Vegetable Marrow Soup

Why it works: Mushroom and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil.

  2. Add the Vegetable Marrow (or leftover Mock Stuffed Goose) and onions, and boil until tender.

  3. Strain the mixture and rub it through a sieve back into the saucepan.

  4. Stir in the Browning and Mushroom Ketchup, and season with pepper and salt.

  5. Serve hot with fried bread slices.

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. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

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, softening into a tender, fine purée when rubbed through a sieve.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness as they soften in the boiling water.
Browning
Adds a deeper brown colour to the soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour.

The step that matters

Rubbing the boiled mixture through a sieve. Pressing the cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks down their fibres and produces a smooth texture; skipping or rushing this leaves the soup coarse and stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, ketchup, pepper, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ketchup, pepper, 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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