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Vegetable Marrow Soup

A soup made with vegetable marrow, onion, butter, flour, milk, and stock, simmered and thickened with a roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Vegetable Marrow Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Finely mince the onion.

  2. Cut the vegetable marrow into small pieces, removing the seeds.

Cook and strain

  1. Melt 1 oz of butter in a stewpan. Add the vegetables. Cover the pot. Steam for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Add the milk and water. Cook gently for about 40 minutes or until tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Thicken and serve

  1. Melt the remaining 1 oz of butter. Stir in the flour until smooth. Add the strained mixture. Stir until it boils. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Season to taste. Serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk of the soup and, once cooked and sieved, gives it body and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted to start the vegetables and to make the roux.
Flour
Combined with butter as a roux, it thickens the liquid as it comes to a boil.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the soup as it cooks gently with the vegetables.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and a base flavour as it softens with the marrow.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour lumps form if it meets hot liquid unevenly. Blending it smoothly into the melted butter first lets the starch disperse and thicken the soup evenly when it boils.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, 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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