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A Fine Sauce, or Puree of Vegetable Marrow

A sauce made by stewing vegetable marrow and mild onion, then pureeing and enriching with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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A Fine Sauce, or Puree of Vegetable Marrow

Why it works: Onion and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,841 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Fine Sauce, or Puree of Vegetable Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and seed the vegetable marrow, then slice it with the mild onion.

  2. Combine the sliced marrow and onion in a pot with the veal broth or gravy.

Cook and strain

  1. Stew the mixture gently for nearly an hour.

  2. Add salt and cayenne or white pepper when nearly done.

  3. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the strained sauce again and stir in the cream when it boils.

  2. Serve with boiled chicken, stewed or boiled veal, lamb cutlets, or other delicate meats.

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. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  2. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Veal + white peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. White pepper + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  5. Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 sauce, becoming soft and smooth when stewed and pressed.
Veal broth or pale gravy
Supplies the liquid and savory base in which the marrow and onion soften.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture when stirred into the hot sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream only when the sauce boils. Cream can curdle or separate if it is overheated or boiled hard for long, so it should be added at the point the record specifies and kept hot rather than vigorously boiling.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, veal, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, cream. 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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