Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Marrow Soup

A soup made from vegetable marrow, onion, butter, flour, milk, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 the soup

  1. Peel and cut the marrow into squares.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the marrow, onion, sugar, butter, and a little salt and pepper.

  3. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes.

  4. Add the boiling water and stew slowly for 20 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the flour with a little milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the remaining milk and stir it into the soup.

  3. Continue stirring until it boils, season to taste.

  4. Serve with small squares of toast.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 softens into a tender, mild base as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the milk and soup into a smooth, body-rich texture when stirred to a boil.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness, and thickens with the flour as the soup boils.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the soft vegetables.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens with the marrow.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into a smooth paste before adding the milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules swell unevenly on contact. Blending it first with a little cold milk lets each granule separate, so the soup thickens smoothly when it boils.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, milk, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes