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Vegetable Marrow Soup

A soup made from marrow, onions, celery, butter, stock, and egg, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Vegetable Marrow Soup

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the marrow, remove the seeds, and cut it into slices.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the marrow slices, sliced onions, chopped celery, and butter.

  3. Simmer slowly over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Make the soup

  1. Add the stock and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Boil gently until all the vegetables are soft.

  3. Pass the mixture through a wire colander and return it to the saucepan.

  4. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and stir in the yolk of the egg before serving.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Marrow
Forms the bulk of the soup and gives it a soft, mellow body when cooked down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour as the vegetables soften gently.
Egg
Its yolk enriches and thickens the soup when stirred in off the heat.
Onions
Build sweetness and aroma as they soften slowly in butter.
Celery
Contributes savoury aroma and body as it softens into the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk into the soup. If the soup is at a hard boil when the yolk goes in, the egg can scramble into specks instead of thickening it smoothly. Removing the pan from heat first lets the yolk enrich the soup gently.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, egg, pepper. 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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