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Vegetable Marrow As an Imitation of Apples

A sweet dish of sliced vegetable marrow simmered with sugar, flour or breadcrumbs, cloves, wine and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,493 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow As an Imitation of Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the vegetable marrow and remove the soft pulp and seeds.

  2. Cut the marrow into thin slices.

Layer and simmer

  1. Butter an enamelled pot and layer the sliced marrow with sugar, flour or bread crumbs, cloves, and a pinch of salt.

  2. Pour the wine and vinegar mixture over the last layer.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours, stirring carefully to prevent burning.

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. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 dish; its flesh softens during long simmering to become tender.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it dissolves, helps form the syrupy sauce.
Flour or bread crumbs
Thickens the cooking liquid so the sauce becomes body rather than watery.
Wine and vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering with stirring. Sugar-rich liquid scorches on the bottom of the pot over a long simmer. Stirring carefully keeps the sugars from caramelising and burning while the marrow softens and the sauce thickens.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, wine, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, wine, vinegar. 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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