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Vegetable Marrow Aux Fines Herbes

Boiled vegetable marrow topped with herb butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marrows

  1. Peel the marrows thinly and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Remove the seedy portion.

Cook and drain

  1. In a pan, bring salted water to a boil and add the marrows.

  2. Cook until tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Carefully lift the marrows with a slice and drain on a sieve.

Make the herb butter and serve

  1. Place the marrows on a vegetable dish on a slice of toasted bread.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, then add the shallot, parsley, tarragon, and chervil.

  3. Fry for a few seconds and pour over the marrows.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Vegetable marrows
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the herb flavours over the marrows.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma when gently fried in the butter.

The step that matters

Frying the herbs in butter. Fry the shallot and herbs for only a few seconds. Fine herbs scorch quickly, turning bitter and dark, while brief heat in fat releases their aroma.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, tarragon, chervil):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, tarragon, chervil. 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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