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Vegetable Marrow a LA Crame

A sautéed vegetable marrow fillet served on crostini with béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow a LA Crame

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the vegetable marrow and cut it in half.

  2. Remove the seeds and pithy part, then cut into oval fillets about 2 inches long and 1.5 inches wide.

Cook

  1. In a sauté pan, melt the butter and add the fillets.

  2. Stew the fillets until tender.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Fry the slice of bread to make a crostini of the same size as the fillets.

Serve

  1. Serve the fillets on the crostini 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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 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, moist texture when stewed.
Butter
Adds fat for gentle frying and a rich flavour to the fillets.
Bread
Provides a crisp, browned base for the fillets to rest on.
Bechamel sauce
Adds a creamy, mild richness that coats the fillets and crostini.

The step that matters

Stew the fillets until tender. Marrow is watery and dense, so cooking it gently until tender concentrates flavour and avoids a soggy or undercooked texture. Stopping too early leaves it firm; cooking too long turns it mushy.

“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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