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Vegetable Goose

A stuffed vegetable dish made with marrow, onions, sage, bread crumbs, butter, egg, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vegetable Goose

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Trim the marrow and cut it in half lengthwise, removing the seeds.

  2. Parboil the onions and chop them finely.

Fill and bake

  1. Mix the chopped onions with the other ingredients and fill the marrow halves.

  2. Put the two halves together, brush with butter, and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Vegetable marrow
Forms the edible shell that holds the filling and cooks until tender.
Onions
Add sweetness and moisture to the filling as they soften and cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling a soft, crumbly body.
Egg
Binds the filling together and sets as it bakes, holding its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Parboil the onions. Parboiling softens the onions and mellows their sharp raw flavor. It also removes some water, so the filling is less likely to turn soggy or loose when baked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sage, bread, butter, egg, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sage, bread, butter, egg, 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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