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Stuffed Vegetable Marrow No. I
1 small vegetable marrow Half a pint gravy Forcemeat Peel a vegetable marrow about eight inches long, cut it in halves lengthwise, and remove the seeds. Put it into fast boiling water, salted, and let it boil gently for ten minutes. Lift it carefully, and let it drain; then wipe with a clean cloth. Have ready some forcemeat, and fill the hollow in the middle of one half, and place the other half on top. Tie the halves together with twine, and lift the marrow carefully into an oval baking dish. Pour the gravy over the marrow, and cover it closely with another dish over it. Baste occasionally, and bake for an hour in a hot oven. If it is baked with a French baking dish with cover, it can be sent to table in dish it is baked in. If an ordinary dish is used, it would still be better to serve in the dish in which it was baked, as the marrow might be difficult to remove, but a napkin must be fastened around the dish when served.
A straightforward stuffed squash, but the vessel, the vegetable and the word "forcemeat" all need translating for a modern cook.
- Vegetable marrowA marrow is a summer squash left on the plant until it swells and the skin toughens — the same species as courgette/zucchini. An eight-inch marrow is roughly 2 lb; two large zucchini or one small yellow squash split lengthwise will stand in, though they hold less filling and cook faster.
- Forcemeat in a meatless bookForcemeat -- Period forcemeat was usually a bound stuffing of soft breadcrumbs, fat and egg, often with minced meat or suet; the recipe does not specify which is meant here. If a meatless version is wanted, use crumbs, chopped nuts or cooked lentils, grated onion, herbs, a little fat and an egg to hold it. Reckon on roughly 2 cups of stuffing for an eight-inch marrow.
- Half a pint of gravyAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. Use a well-seasoned vegetable or mushroom gravy; it is both the cooking liquid and the sauce, so season it a shade stronger than you would to serve alone.
- A hot ovenRead that as roughly 400-450F; 425F is a safe middle. With the dish tightly covered the marrow steams as much as it bakes, so the high heat is less punishing than it sounds -- but check before the full hour is up.
- The hinge: do not overboil the shellThe ten-minute blanch is meant only to soften the marrow enough to handle. Take it out while it still has resistance; a marrow boiled to tenderness will collapse in the oven and flood the gravy with water.
- Drying mattersWiping with a cloth is not fussiness. Marrow is largely water, and a wet cavity turns breadcrumb stuffing to paste and thins the gravy.
- Tying and coveringKitchen twine at three points, and an inverted dish or a tight sheet of foil for the cover. The "French baking dish with cover" is simply a lidded oval gratin dish; any covered casserole of the right shape works.
- YieldAn eight-inch marrow will probably serve three to four as a main course with potatoes, or more if sliced across into rounds as part of a larger meal.
Vegetable marrow was a fixture of the British kitchen garden — cheap, enormously productive, and prone to arriving all at once in late summer — which is exactly why cookery writers worked so hard to find things to do with it. Its own flavour is faint, so it was often treated as a container: hollowed, stuffed, and given a sauce with some character. The stuffed marrow does particular work, since the shape and the carving at table mimic a joint, and a forcemeat of crumbs, nuts and herbs supplies the savour that the squash cannot.