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Vegetable Marrow, Boiled
INGREDIENTS -To each gallon of water, allow 1 heaped tablespoonful of salt; vegetable marrows. AVERAGE COST, 2d. to 4d. each.
Have ready a saucepan of boiling water, salted in the above proportion; put in the marrows after peeling them, and boil them until quite tonder. Take them up with Vegetable Marrow, Fried.
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-3 medium-sized vegetable marrows, egg and bread-crumbs, hot lard. AVERAGE COST, 2d. to 4d. each.
Peel, and boil the marrows until tender in salt and water; then drain them and them in quarters, and take out the seede, When thoroughly drained, brush the marrows over with egg, and sprinkle with VEGETABLE MARROW. 'bread-crumbs; have ready some hot lard, fry the marrow in this, and, when of a nice brown, dish; sprinkle over a little salt and pepper, and serve.
TIME.-About 1/2 hour to boil the marrow, 7 minutes to fry it.
SEASONABLE in July, August and September.
Vegetable Marrows in White Sauce. INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-3 moderate-sized marrows, 1/2 pint of white sauce. AVERAGE COST, 2d. to 4d. each.
Pare the marrows, cut them in halves, and shape each half at the top in a point, leaving the bottom end flat for it to stand upright in the dish.
Boil the marrows in salt and water untiltender; take VEGETABLE MARROW IN WHITE SAUCE. them up very carefully, and arrange them on a hot dish. Have ready 1/2 pint of white sauce; pour this over the marrows, and serve.
TIME. From 15 to 20 minutes to boil the marrows.
SEASONABLE in July, August and September.
Vegetable Marrow Soup.
INGREDIENTS for soup for 10 persons. young vegetable marrows, or more, if very small, 1/2 pint of cream, salt and white pepper to taste, 2 quarts of white stock.
AVERAGE COST, 3s.
Pare and slice the marrows, and put them in the stock boiling. When done almost to a mash, press them through a sieve, and, at the moment of serving, add the boiling cream and seasoning.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE in summer.
Vegetable marrow is the large, watery summer squash of British kitchen gardens; a big zucchini or pattypan behaves the same way. The whole group of dishes here depends on one thing: getting the water out before you dress or fry the flesh.
- What to buyVegetable marrow is a marrow squash picked large; the modern equivalent is an overgrown courgette or a young pattypan. Choose ones under about 2 lb, since the flesh of very large marrows is stringy and the seeds coarse.
- The hinge: drain hardMarrow is mostly water, and boiled marrow left to sit will flood a dish or turn a coating to paste. Drain the quarters cut side down in a colander for several minutes before saucing or crumbing them.
- Boiling saltA heaped tablespoon of salt per gallon is roughly 20-25 g to an imperial gallon, about 4.5 litres, a light seasoning by modern standards. Marrow needs only 10-15 minutes in boiling water -- the book's own white-sauce recipe says 15 to 20 -- so the "about 1/2 hour" given for the fried version will leave it collapsing.
- Frying fatThe book says only "hot lard"; in modern terms that is shallow frying at around 350F. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point serves; 7 minutes is right for a golden crust, turning once, and the marrow inside is already cooked.
- Average cost"2d. to 4d. each" is twopence to fourpence in pre-decimal pence, a period price note rather than an instruction. The 3s. for the soup is three shillings, mostly the stock and cream.
- White sauceHalf a pint here is a British half-pint, 10 fl oz or about 284 ml, made as a plain base of butter, flour and milk. Make it slightly thicker than usual so it clings to the wet surface of the marrow.
- The soupTwo quarts of white stock is about 2.3 litres, and the cream should be scalded and stirred in off the heat at the last moment so it does not split. Sieving is the old method; a blender then a fine sieve gives a smoother result.
- Season lateMarrow has very little flavour of its own, so taste and correct salt and white pepper after the cream goes in. A scrape of nutmeg or a squeeze of lemon lifts all four dishes.
Vegetable marrow was one of the great successes of the Victorian kitchen garden: a cheap, enormously productive squash that ripened in glut from July to September, which is exactly the season Mrs Beeton's headings repeat. Because the flesh is bland and watery, nineteenth-century cooks treated it as a vehicle rather than a flavour, boiling it and then giving it egg and crumbs, a white sauce, or cream and stock to carry it. The variety of preparations grouped together on this page shows the practical problem of a household facing a row of marrows all coming at once. The name "marrow" is generally traced to the soft interior, in the same sense as bone marrow, and survives in Britain today for the mature courgette, while American cooks meet the same plant under the Italian name.