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Vegetable Marrow Pickle

A pickle made from marrow, mustard, ginger, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marrow

  1. Peel the marrow and remove the seeds, then cut it into dice.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let it sit overnight.

  3. Strain the marrow through a colander.

Make the pickle

  1. Mix the ginger, mustard, and turmeric into a smooth paste with cold vinegar.

  2. Boil the remaining vinegar.

  3. Stir in the spice mixture (tied in a muslin bag) and boil.

  4. Add the marrow and boil until tender.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 pickle and softens into tender pieces when boiled.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavor and helps preserve it.
Ginger
Adds a warm, pungent aroma and spice to the pickling liquid.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and an earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the marrow until tender. Marrow is watery, so boiling it too briefly leaves it firm and raw, while boiling too long breaks it down into mush. Checking for tenderness keeps the pieces intact.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, turmeric, clove, vinegar):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, turmeric, clove, 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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