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Dessert

Vegetable Marrow Pudding

A baked pudding made from boiled marrow, breadcrumbs, eggs, butter, sugar, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the marrow

  1. Boil the peeled and cut marrow pieces with a little salt until tender.

  2. Drain and press the marrow through a sieve.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix the sieved marrow with flour and breadcrumbs.

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy, then add the grated rind and juice of the lemon.

  3. Combine all ingredients and pour into a well-buttered mold.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1½ hours, or steam if preferred.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Marrow
Forms the moist, soft body of the pudding once cooked and pressed smooth.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender crumb and a smooth texture.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and add body, helping the pudding hold its shape.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds together rather than turning loose.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the butter cream to a light texture.

The step that matters

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Creaming works air into the fat and sugar, which lightens the texture of the finished pudding. Under-beaten butter leaves the mixture dense and uneven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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