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Vegetable Marrows

Boiled marrow seasoned with pepper, salt, and sugar, served on toast with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrows

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the marrow.

  2. Cut the marrow in half and remove the seeds.

  3. Cut the marrow into pieces.

Boil and drain

  1. Boil the pieces until soft.

  2. Drain the marrow in a colander until all water is removed.

Season and serve

  1. Beat the marrow with a fork.

  2. Season the marrow with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sugar.

  3. Slice the boiled marrow.

  4. Place the sliced marrow on toast.

  5. Pour melted butter over the 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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Marrow
Forms the soft, mild body of the dish once boiled and beaten.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the savoury seasoning.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the toast.

The step that matters

Drain the marrow until all water is removed. Boiled marrow holds a lot of water. Excess moisture left in the flesh makes it watery and dilutes the seasoning, so thorough draining keeps the texture firm and the flavour concentrated.

“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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