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Vegetable Marrow

A stuffed vegetable marrow filled with a seasoned meat and vegetable mixture baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marrows

  1. Peel and halve the vegetable marrows lengthwise, then remove the seeds.

  2. Blanch the marrows in boiling water for 3 minutes, then drain well.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped cold meat or poultry, salt, shallot or onion, flour, Worcestershire sauce, halved tomatoes, and chopped mushrooms.

  2. Blend the mixture with the stock or gravy and mix well.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the marrows with the mixture and place them in a well-buttered paper bag.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for 35 to 50 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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 marrows
Form the edible shell that holds the filling while it cooks.
Cold meat or poultry
Provides the main savoury filling that becomes flavourful as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock or gravy so the filling holds together rather than running out.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savoury, earthy depth to the filling.
Stock or gravy
Moistens the filling and carries flavour through the mixture.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, shallot, flour, sauce, mushroom, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, shallot, flour, sauce, mushroom, 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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