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Vegetable Marrow Fried in Batter

Slices of boiled vegetable marrow coated in batter and fried until golden, served with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Fried in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marrows

  1. Pare the marrows.

  2. Quarter the marrows.

  3. Boil the marrows for 10 minutes until three‑quarters cooked.

  4. Drain the marrows.

  5. Sprinkle the marrows with pepper and salt.

  6. Cut the marrows into slices.

Fry the slices

  1. Dip the slices into the frying batter.

  2. Fry the battered slices in hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Lift the slices onto a dish.

  4. Sprinkle the slices with chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve the slices alone or with dressed meat.

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour and salt in a bowl to make the frying batter.

  2. Work in water to form a paste.

  3. Add oil and the egg yolk to the batter, beating until smooth.

  4. Let the batter stand in a cool place for 1 hour.

  5. Fold in the whisked egg whites until frothy.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Main vegetable; its moisture turns to steam inside the batter while it fries.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter that coats the slices and sets into a crisp shell when fried.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the batter bind to the vegetable.
Egg whites
Whisked in for air, making the batter light and frothy for a crisp, airy coating.
Oil
Adds fat to the batter, giving a tender texture and browning.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly. If it is too cool, the coating soaks up oil, turns greasy and fails to crisp.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, egg. 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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