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Stewed Vegetable Marrow

A stew of marrow and onion cooked slowly in butter, salt, and pepper, served hot with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Vegetable Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the marrow and onion, then cut the marrow into small thick squares and remove the seeds.

  2. Finely chop the onion.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter or dripping with the pepper and salt.

  2. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes without browning.

  3. Stir in the marrow and cook slowly until it becomes soft, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot vegetable dish and serve with toast.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Marrow
Forms the main body of the dish and softens into a tender, stewed texture.
Butter or dripping
Provides fat for cooking the vegetables and carries flavour through the stew.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour as it softens in the fat.

The step that matters

Stirring the marrow while it stews. Marrow has high water content and little fat, so it can stick and scorch in the pan. Stirring occasionally and cooking slowly lets the moisture release and the pieces soften evenly without burning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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