Name: Vegetable Marrow a LA CRIlME
Ingredients: 1 vegetable marrow; 2 tablespoons butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste; fried croutons of toast; Bechamel Sauce (for serving)

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow a LA CRIlME

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel the vegetable marrow and cut it in half.
Remove the seeds and pithy part, then cut it into oval fillets about 2 inches long and 1.5 inches wide.

Cook

In a sauté pan, melt the butter and add the fillets.
Cook until tender, then season with salt and pepper.

Serve

Serve the fillets on fried croutons of toast and pour béchamel sauce over them.

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.

Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 main body of the dish and softens into a tender, mild-flavoured base when cooked.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the marrow brown lightly and carry flavour in the pan.

“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.