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Vegetable Marrow Soup

A soup made from marrow, onion, wheatmeal, milk, and water, seasoned with butter, pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Vegetable Marrow Soup

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the seeds from the marrow and cut it into pieces.

  2. Chop the onion finely.

Cook and strain

  1. Cook the marrow and onion in water for 20 minutes with butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve back into the saucepan.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the wheatmeal smoothly with the milk and add it to the soup.

  2. Allow the soup to simmer for 5 minutes and stir in the parsley 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 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, once cooked and sieved, gives it a smooth body.
Wheatmeal
Thickens the soup as it simmers, giving it body and a fuller texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness, rounding the flavour of the squash.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the vegetables.

The step that matters

Smoothly mixing the wheatmeal with the milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules hydrate unevenly. Whisking it into cold milk first disperses the particles so the soup thickens evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, milk, 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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