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Vegetable Marrow Fried in Butter

Battered and fried vegetable marrows served with parsley garnish.

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 Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marrow

  1. Pare and quarter the marrows.

  2. Boil them for 10 minutes until three‑quarters cooked.

  3. Drain the marrows.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper and salt.

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add water to form a paste.

  3. Stir in oil and the egg yolk, beating until smooth.

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

  5. Whisk the egg whites to a firm froth.

  6. Fold the egg whites into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip them in the frying batter.

  2. Fry the marrows in hot oil or lard until golden brown.

  3. Transfer the fried marrows to a dish.

  4. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  5. Serve alone or with dressed meat.

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

Marrows
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled and fried.
All-purpose flour
Forms the batter's structure, thickening it into a coating that crisps when fried.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the batter bind and become smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they lighten the batter so the coating stays airy when fried.
Oil
Adds fat to the batter and carries heat for frying to a golden brown finish.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the batter. Whites beaten to a firm froth trap air that lightens the coating. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a dense batter that fries heavy and greasy.

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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