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Vegetable Marrow, Fried

Fried vegetable marrows coated in egg and breadcrumbs, cooked in lard until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and boil the marrows in salted water until tender, about 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the marrows and cut them into quarters, removing the seeds.

Fry and serve

  1. Brush the marrows with egg and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Heat hot lard in a frying pan and fry the marrows until golden brown, about 7 minutes.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then serve.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Provide the bulk of the dish, turning soft and tender when boiled.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the marrow pieces.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot lard.
Hot lard
Conducts heat for frying and encourages browning and a crisp crust.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. The lard must be hot before the marrows go in. Hot fat sears the crumb coating quickly, forming a crisp crust and limiting oil absorption, while cooler fat makes the coating greasy and soggy.

“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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