Vegetable marrows. They were quite common during my childhood in New Zealand during the 1950s: huge and watery, a heavy vegetable to lug home from the shops. (Like many of our neighbours, we didn’t have a car.) In the British tradition we inherited in Australasia, marrows were grown, very often by home gardeners as well as commercially, until large and virtually tasteless. The only reasonable way to eat them was split longways, seeds scooped out and the cavity filled with a savoury mince mixture, baked in the oven. Sadly, Mum’s mince mixtures were never savoury. So marrow was never a favourite with the kids.
It wasn’t a favourite elsewhere, either. In 1978 Jane Grigson (1928-1990) wrote sourly:
Vegetable Marrow
The Bunter of the kitchen garden has little to be said for it. Some cookery writers define its flavour as ‘delicate’. This carries politeness too far. The marrow swells and swells with water, not goodness. Once the dropsy has carried it beyond 1 1/2 kg (3 lb), it is no fun at all, except as a vehicle for other flavours when making jam and chutney.
(Jane Grigson. Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. Harmondsworth, England, Penguin, 1980, p.532. (First published: London, Michael Joseph, 1978))
She wasn’t talking about Dorothy L Sayers’s creation, Lord Peter Wimsey’s manservant, the faithful Bunter, but Billy Bunter, the grossly swollen fat boy from Greyfriars School known to generations of English schoolkids who followed the stories in The Magnet and its spin-offs. She does suggest a recipe for stuffed marrow, advising us to use a Greek-style stuffing, but it’s without enthusiasm.
When Grigson was young, in the 1930s and early 1940s, the giant vegetable marrow had indeed become a feature of the English “kitchen garden”. Pictures speak louder than words, so here’s the visual proof! The vegetable marrows, stripy ones in this instance, are spreading, about to take over the garden. This lovely wood engraving by Tirzah Garwood, which I came across by sheer chance when researching for one of my novels, dates from 1930:
Well, times change. It took several decades, but by the end of the century the big watery, tasteless marrow no longer formed part of our cuisine and was grown almost entirely as a curiosity, size being the criterion, not edibility.
In 2006 marrow was not even listed in the index to Cook, the large 21st-century compendium issued by the Australian Women’s Weekly, the magazine that for decades was the Aussie home cook’s go-to for all things culinary. (Australian Women’s Weekly. Cook: How To Cook Absolutely Everything. Sydney, NSW, ACP Books, 2006).
Okay, according to the Weekly, the marrow no longer exists—well, it can’t do, if it’s not part of “absolutely everything”, can it?
Marrows have in effect vanished from our tables and our shops in favour of the now ubiquitous zucchini. Zucchinis (courgettes) were not known in Australia and New Zealand until the 1970s. At that time marrows were still available from greengrocers, but they began to vanish concurrently with the advance of the supermarkets.
Although it was to become so popular with the home gardeners of the 20th century, the British haven’t actually had the marrow for very long: it was still quite a recent introduction in Mrs Beeton’s time. She writes:
THE VEGETABLE MARROW.—This is a variety of the gourd family, brought from Persia by an East-India ship, and only recently introduced to Britain. It is already cultivated to a considerable extent, and, by many, is highly esteemed when fried with butter. It is, however, dressed in different ways, either by stewing or boiling, and, besides, made into pies.
(Isabella Beeton. The Book of Household Management. [London], S.O. Beeton, 1861)
In fact, the earliest recipe that I found a few years back listed in the historical database The Foods of England (now sadly defunct) dates from 1852. It’s by Francatelli (one-time cook to Queen Victoria and later at the Reform Club) in his A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes.
The recipes I’ve found, mainly from Australia and New Zealand, cover a period of about 100 years, up to about the 1970s.
We do find a set by Mrs Wicken, an Australian author writing at the end of the 19th century, in: Philip E. Muskett and Mrs H. Wicken. The Art of Living in Australia, by Philip E. Muskett; Together With Three Hundred Australian Cookery Recipes and Accessory Kitchen Information by Mrs. H. Wicken. London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, [1894] http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4219
In this first dish, the marrow would serve to bulk out the tomatoes in the soup. (Note that I have edited out the typo in the list of ingredients: 9 onions, a huge and very unlikely number; onions do not appear in the cooking instructions.) At a total cost of sevenpence, it was a cheap meal for the family. The marrow itself was priced at only twopence—two pennies, while a dozen tomatoes were still only threepence. The recipe would still work quite well today: you could use a tin of tomatoes instead of the fresh ones, and add herbs to taste. Note that Mrs Wicken adds sugar, a great idea when you’re cooking anything saucy or soupy with tomatoes!
Vegetable Marrow and Tomato Soup
* 1 doz. Tomatoes * 1 Vegetable Marrow
* 1 oz. Butter * 2 doz. Peppercorns * 1 teaspoonful Sugar
* 3 pints Stock * Salt
Total Cost—7d. Time—One Hour.
Peel the vegetable marrow, slice it up, and take out the seeds; slice up the tomatoes and put them, with the marrow, into the saucepan with the butter, sugar, salt, and peppercorns; sweat them for five minutes. Pour over the boiling water or stock, and simmer for one hour. Rub through a sieve and return to the saucepan. Add more salt, if necessary, bring it to the boil, pour into a tureen, and serve.
Mrs Wicken also offers us recipes for serving marrow as a side dish with a sauce. In her “Baked Vegetable Marrow” the presence of gravy used as a sauce to finish may strike us as odd, but it was quite normal practice at the period. Otherwise it’s a very bland, basic recipe, the veg well baked with a little fat—in this case dripping.
The next recipe, though not at all atypical of the British tradition which dominated Australasian cookery since the colonies were first founded, is one of the blandest I’ve ever been privileged to read, and quite possibly goes some way towards explaining why the vegetable marrow was eventually to fall out of favour entirely! I’ve given it in full so as you see I’m not exaggerating:
Vegetable Marrow
* 1 Marrow * 1/2 pint White Sauce * Salt
Total Cost—5d. Time—15 Minutes
Peel the marrow, take out the seeds, and cut it into small pieces; put into boiling water nicely seasoned with salt, and boil gently for about fifteen minutes. Take up with a slice and strain in a colander, place in a hot dish, and pour over the sauce.
White Sauce
* 1/2 pint Milk * 1 oz. Butter * 1/2 oz. Flour * Salt and Pepper
Total Cost—2 1/2d. Time—15 Minutes.
Put the butter into a small saucepan, and when it is dissolved put in the flour; mix well and pour on the cold milk and stir till it boils. Let it boil for two minutes and it is ready. It may be served either as a sweet or savoury sauce, putting either sugar or pepper and salt, as required.
Mrs Wicken’s fourth recipe, of which I’ll spare you the details, is for a stuffed marrow. On first reading it looks quite tasty: it includes “Veal Forcemeat”. A veal stuffing? Very nice. But, alas, all is not as it seems… It’s a recipe for a plain stuffing for veal: a concoction of breadcrumbs and suet, bound with egg and flavoured with a miserly helping of herbs. It doesn’t include veal, or any meat. The result would be extremely bland. Mrs Wicken baked her marrow in a fish kettle, an extra-long baking dish meant for a whole large fish: clearly, back in the early 1890s vegetable marrows were large and long Down Under, in the English tradition. What you’d get would be an unappetising suet pudding surrounded by a pale, soggy vegetable! It’s the sort of recipe that makes one feel considerable sympathy for Jane Grigson’s position on the Bunter-like “vegetable marrow”.
Here’s the sort of thing that was available to the New Zealand housewife when I was very young (the recipe is four years older than me). I found this recipe by mere serendipity when I was looking for a picture to illustrate what marrows looked like in my youth. Don’t laugh, but the mag it came from is one of the titles that Dad, who was a dedicated model-railroader, used to read!
Stuffed Vegetable Marrow
* One small marrow * 3 tablespoons minced cooked meat or poultry
* 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs * 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
* grated lemon rind *1 egg, beaten * seasoning
* 1/2 pint thick brown gravy
Skin marrow and keep it whole. Cut out a wedge-shaped piece lengthwise and remove the seeds and soft pulp. Mix the minced meat, breadcrumbs, parsley and lemon rind with beaten egg. Put the mixture in the marrow and replace the cut-out piece. Dredge the marrow with flour. Place on a greased baking tin, bake in a moderate oven for 45–60 minutes, or until tender, basting frequently. Serve with gravy or tomato sauce.
Source: Helen. The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 15, Issue 2 (May 1, 1940), New Zealand Electronic Text Collection,
https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov15_02Rail-t1-body-d21-d11.html
Well, it might be edible, if the meat was tasty and the marrow really was young. Mum’s efforts were never so elaborate, and we certainly never got gravy with it, all the gravy would have vanished with the customary hot roast leg of hogget or mutton. (Yes, Veronica, a large roast was cheap fare for the family in those days.) And tomato sauce of any variety, Wattie’s bottled or homemade alike, was unknown for well over a decade in our house. But the basic idea is the same. Very little flavouring, and the “minced cooked meat or poultry” was always, by the time Mum was reduced to the desperate measure of baking a marrow, just the last scraps, the roast having done a family of, at that time, two adults and three little kids, for at least two and quite probably three meals already. Her method of eking out the gristly minced result was, no kidding, to dampen it with water. And an egg would never have been “wasted” on stuffing. So much for the stuffed marrows of my childhood!
In the 1940s stuffed marrow also appears in one of Australia’s most popular cookbooks of the first half of the 20th century, the Green and Gold Cookery Book. Like all the very popular cookbooks of the Antipodes, it ran through umpteen so-called “editions” which were almost entirely reprints. Therefore, most recipes in this edition are much older than its date of publication, which was just before the introduction of myxomatosis destroyed Australia’s rabbit population around 1950 (the book still has rabbit recipes). Pretty clearly the cooks of the time were still doing the recipes their grannies relied on. And this was one of them:
Stuffed Vegetable Marrow
Cook the marrow in boiling salted water for 15 minutes. Drain, peel thinly, and cut in half lengthwise and remove the seeds. Fill the marrow with the following stuffing: Mix together one onion finely chopped, 1 oz. butter, one dessertspoon chopped sage, 1/4 lb. bread crumbs, salt and pepper to taste, and moisten with the yolk of an egg. Place the pieces of marrow into original shape and lay in a buttered dish; brush with butter. Bake in a hot oven for three-quarters to one hour, according to size and age of marrow.
Source: Green and Gold Cookery Book: Containing Many Good and Proved Recipes. 15th ed. (rev.), Adelaide, R.M. Osborne, [1949?]
It’s generous with the sage, you’d be able to taste something! In the stuffing butter has replaced suet, which wasn’t unusual in Australia and New Zealand by this time, but otherwise it’s pretty much Mrs Wicken’s horridly bland recipe from the 1890s.
Stuffing the marrow, even with a meatless mixture as basic as the one above, wasn’t the only approach that lingered on from the 19th century—by no means. Here’s another from the same source:
Marrow or Trombone
Cut marrow or trombone into suitable pieces and peel thinly so as to show the green. Drop into cold water. Cook in boiling salted water with the lid partly off till done - 15 to 20 minutes. Lift out with a slice and serve on toast placed in a hot vegetable dish. Pour over melted butter sauce and garnish with finely chopped parsley.
Source: Green and Gold Cookery Book: Containing Many Good and Proved Recipes. 15th ed. (rev.), Adelaide, R.M. Osborne, [1949?]
“Trombone” belongs, like marrow, to the family of squashes. It’s an Italian vegetable, also known as “tromboncino”, sometimes “serpentine squash” or “rampicante”. Modern photos show the picked ones as only of medium size, eaten while they are still green and thus not technically ripe (they ripen to a soft apricot-beige shade), and much smaller than marrows. You will find some modern trendy recipes for the vegetable online: it’s about the same consistency and taste as zucchinis, and the cooks use it in zucchini recipes. Intriguing to find it in an Aussie recipe circa 1949!
What a pity, though, that it couldn’t have been brightened up with something more exciting than melted butter. And unless the marrow was nice and young—most unlikely at that era—it would have been watery, especially if overcooked, as was the trend with all vegetables.
And the toast? It was a then-dying fashion which dated back to at least Mrs Beeton’s time (1861: she has a similar recipe, though it’s clearly meant for young, smaller marrows.) By the end of the 19th century this would-be elegant style of presentation on toast had become a fixture of the tables of the British Raj in India, where “first toast” for hors d’oeuvres and “second toast” for a savoury served at the end of a meal were standard terms—one can picture the English housewife desperately keeping up appearances far from home. In the Green and Gold book the style is clearly considered dainty by its contributors; especially if the toast is cut into elegant triangles!
Brightening up the marrow, or harking back? Both trends are discernible in this period. In the first recipe, which is an English one, you’ll see that Jane Grigson’s advice about limiting the size of the marrow you choose is taken.
Marrow Baked with Sesame Seeds
* 1 small marrow, about 1 1/2 - 2 lb (675-900 g)
* 1 oz [25-30 g] butter or marg * 2 tablesp tomato puree
* 2 tablesp tamari sauce (Japanese soy sauce)
* 2 tablesp wheatgerm * 2 tablesp sesame seeds
Preheat oven to Reg 6 (400° F, 200 C).
Peel marrow, leave in the seeds, & cut into 8 slices about 1 in thick.
Put the butter or marg into a large, flat ovenproof dish & put in oven to melt.
Turn marrow slices in the butter so they are well coated & bake 30 mins.
Meanwhile mix tomato puree, tamari, sesame seeds & wheatgerm, Spread mixture evenly over marrow slices & return to oven for 15 mins.
–Serves 4.
Source: Gail Duff. Gail Duff's Vegetarian Cookbook. London, Macmillan, 1978
By 1980 marrows were out of favour in New Zealand, and so the three cook-gardeners who collaborated in writing and illustrating The Cook’s Garden only offered two suggestions for using a full-grown marrow: stuff it or use it for jam. By contrast, they have eleven for zucchini or courgettes. (They endeavour to distinguish between the two by size but it’s a false distinction: they are only the Italian and French names for the same thing, of which by this time several varieties were available to home gardeners.) Their recipe for a stuffed marrow is by far the tastiest I’ve come across, though in accordance with the British tradition in which they write they’re mean with the fresh thyme, preferring parsley. I’ve reformatted their recipe, but otherwise it’s verbatim. Like the Owl and the Pussycat, they took some mince:
Stuffed Marrow
This versatile recipe can be used for a large vegetable marrow or three smaller marrows.
* 1 large vegetable marrow (1.5 kg) or 3 smaller marrows
Stuffing:
* 250 g [beef] mince * 60 g mushrooms, chopped * 1 small egg
* 1 small onion, finely chopped * 1 tablesp chopped parsley
* 1/2 tsp chopped thyme * 50 g soft breadcrumbs * 2 tablesp butter
* freshly-ground black pepper * 1/2 tsp salt
Plus: * 2 tablesp melted butter (extra)
Peel a large vegetable marrow, cut off the ends and use a spoon to remove the seeds. Do not peel smaller marrows. Cut evenly in half and remove the soft centres and any seeds.
Melt the [first 2 tablesp] butter in a frying pan, add the onion and sauté for a few minutes. Add the mince and mushrooms and continue to cook until brown. Remove from the heat. Add the remaining ingredients except for the melted butter. Mix thoroughly with a fork.
Pack the stuffing carefully into the marrow or marrows. Place in a large roasting pan and brush with melted butter. Cover with a piece of foil. Bake at 190°C. A large marrow will need 1 1/2 hours and small marrows 45 minutes. When cooked the marrow flesh will be tender. Serve with freshly-made Neapolitan sauce.
–Serves 8 (using 1 large vegetable marrow & twice the stuffing).
–Serves 6 (using 3 “zucchini marrows” (15-20 cm) or 3 “scallop marrows” (custard marrows/yellow bush scallops, 7-10 cm diameter).
************
Neapolitan Tomato Sauce
Skin the tomatoes and chop the garlic ahead of time.
* 500 g ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
* 2 or 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped * 1 tsp chopped basil or parsley
* 1 tablesp cooking oil * salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
Sauté the tomatoes, garlic and seasoning in oil for a few minutes. Do not allow the tomatoes to become pulpy as the fresh taste will be lost. Add basil or parsley and serve.
Source: Mary Browne, Helen Leach & Nancy Tichborne. The Cook's Garden: For Cooks Who Garden and Gardeners Who Cook. Wellington, [N.Z.], A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1980
The use of butter in preparing the marrow is in accordance with New Zealand tradition (as is the expression “mince”, unqualified, meaning beef mince), but these days if you were serving the dish with delicious Neapolitan sauce I think you’d use olive oil. And definitely olive oil for the sauce!
The other recipe from 1980 is from an Australian compendium of recipes which purport to date from the time of the early settlers: the late 18th century onwards. However, the majority obviously don’t: the author must have solicited recipes from all her friends. This item, however, is so odd that it might well be an oldie—though as we’ve seen, vegetable marrows don’t go back much further than early Victorian times in Britain. As usual in this cookbook, there is no indication of provenance. It’s the admixture of sweet with hot and savoury (that’s a lot of cayenne!) which suggests that it might be a very old way of cooking a vegetable, harking back to the times when the addition of sugar and spices wasn’t unusual.
Sugared Marrow
* 1 medium-sized marrow * 3 level tablesp brown sugar
* 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper * 6 tablesp water
* 1/4 lb butter * salt to taste
Peel the marrow. Cut into 1/2 inch slices. Remove seeds. Melt butter in large frying pan. Brown the slices on both sides, then add the sugar, water, salt and cayenne pepper. Cover tightly and simmer slowly, turning over once, until tender. Serve hot. Pour juices over all, adding water if necessary.
Source: L. Pescott. Early Settlers' Household Lore. Rev. ed., Richmond, Vic., Raphael Arts, 1980
The instructions imply that the marrow slices are cooked as rings, which would be quite attractive.
Marrows are apparently still available in the UK, and so the BBC Good Food website gallantly provides some recipes for us, reviving old dishes and adding a few new touches, though not neglecting to warn:
Choose the best marrow
Size matters—a huge marrow is best reserved for a horticultural competition. Hunt out the smallest marrow you can find; it should be no bigger than your forearm. Large marrows will taste bitter and have a watery consistency.
Alternatives to marrow
Try courgette or squash.
For us Gen people who identify with letters of the alphabet they don’t neglect to explain: “Marrows are more mature courgettes, with a creamy flesh and mild taste.” And I just love the title of their article, which tells us how to pronounce the strange name of this unlikely vegetable: “Marrow |marr-oh|”!
Here’s their list of dishes. If you go to the site and click on the one you want you will find the recipe in full. Me, I’d avoid that one with the trendy cavolo nero like the plague, but chacun à son goût.
1. Slow-cooked marrow with fennel & tomato
2. Maple-roasted marrow on cavolo nero salad
3. Marrow & pecan cake with maple icing
4. Marrow & ginger jam
5. Stuffed marrow bake
Source: Good Food Team. “Marrow |marr-oh|”. BBC Good Food, [sourced Sept 2022]
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/glossary/marrow-glossary
Having only managed to recommend 3 savoury recipes (numbers 1, 2 and 5) the Good Food Team fell back on the old trick of using up that overgrown veggie monster in sweet dishes. The one for jam, given below, is the best, I think! An oldie, but still a goodie. Such jam recipes with marrow date back to Mrs Beeton’s time. Pie melons have also been a popular staple for making this jam.
Marrow & Ginger Jam
A traditional way to use up marrows, or courgettes, that have grown too big for their boots.
* 1.8 kg marrow, peeled and cut into sugar-cube-size pieces
* 4 unwaxed lemons
* 1.8 kg jam sugar (with added pectin)
* large knob fresh root ginger, about 85 g, peeled and shredded
STEP 1. Pare the zest from the lemons with a peeler, then juice them, keeping the juice, shells and any pips. Tie the shells and pips into a muslin bag. Put the marrow into a preserving pan with 2 tbsp of the lemon juice, then cook on a medium heat, stirring often, until the pieces are turning translucent and soft but not mushy. Bubble off any juices before stirring in the sugar, the rest of the juice, the zest, ginger and the muslin bag. Stir until the sugar dissolves.
STEP 2. Bring to the boil, then simmer for about 10-15 mins or until the marrow has softened completely and the jam has reached setting point (see Tips, below). Pot the jam into warm jars (see below). The flavour of the jam will mature and intensify over the next few months, so tuck it away in a dark, cool place.
STERILISING JARS
To sterilise jars, wash thoroughly in hot soapy water, then dry in a low oven; or run them through the dishwasher. Pot the jam while the jars are still warm. Will keep up to a year.
KNOW-HOW
To test for setting point, put a saucer into the freezer well before you start boiling. Spoon a little of the jam onto the saucer. Once cool, push it with your finger. If the jam wrinkles, it's ready.
–Makes about 4 x 450 ml jars
Source: Jane Hornby. Good Food, September 2008, BBC Good Food,
[sourced Sept 2022]
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/marrow-ginger-jam
In the British Museum blog of June 2020 there was a recipe “Squash/marrow Alexandria style” which was based on one by Apicius (4th century A.D.).
The oldest marrow recipe of all? Not really. Marrow is one of the squashes, which come from the New World. The gourds that the Romans grew were not squashes, but “the immature, edible fruits of Lagenaria, a cucurbit gourd of African origin widely grown since Antiquity for eating when immature and for drying as watertight receptacles when grown to maturity.” (Wikipedia)
Still, I thought I’d throw in the recipe for its curiosity value. The fish sauce may strike you as odd, if you’ve only encountered it in the context of Asian dishes, but it was very popular with the Romans. And if you have got a nice small marrow in your garden, you could give it a go!
Squash/marrow Alexandria style
“Gourd Alexandrian fashion. Drain boiled gourd, season with salt, arrange in a dish. Crush pepper, cumin, coriander seed, fresh mint, asafoetida root. Moisten with vinegar. Add caryota date, pine kernel; crush. Blend with honey, vinegar, fish sauce, concentrated must and oil, and pour the whole over the gourd. When it has boiled, season with pepper and serve.” –Apicius 4, 2, 14
This dish is the sort of simple dinner that Romans would likely [sic: probably] have had in bars and restaurants where you could easily while away an evening. We have substituted the gourds that the Romans grew for [sic: with] marrow or squash.
Substitute the fish sauce for [sic: with] soy sauce to make this recipe vegetarian.
* 1 small young marrow or yellow squash
* 4 fresh dates, soaked in a little wine
* 2 tablesp pine kernels [pine nuts], soaked in a little wine
* 2 level tsp ground cumin * 2 level tsp ground coriander
* 1/2 tsp ground black pepper * 2 tsp chopped fresh or 2 tsp dried mint
* 1/2 tsp asafoetida powder or 5 drops asafoetida tincture (you can use garlic or onion powder as a substitute)
* 1 tablesp defrutum (reduced red grape juice) (you can use 2 tablesp of red wine as a substitute)
* 2 tablesp honey * 3 tablesp fish sauce * 2 tablesp olive oil
* 3 tablesp red wine vinegar * salt
Slice the marrow or squash and boil until al dente (still firm). Arrange the slices in a baking dish and sprinkle with a little salt. You will need a pestle and mortar for the sauce. Remove the stones from the dates and put the flesh in the mortar with the pine kernels. Mash them down to a paste. Transfer to a bowl and add the cumin, coriander, pepper, mint and asafoetida and mix well. Scrape down the mash and add the honey, defrutum, oil, fish sauce and vinegar. Stir into a smooth emulsion and pour over the marrow or squash. Cover with a lid or foil and reheat thoroughly in a pre-heated oven at 180°C. Serve sprinkled with freshly ground pepper.
–Serves 6.
Source: Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger. The Classical Cookbook, in “Cook a classical feast: nine recipes from ancient Greece and Rome”, British Museum blog, 18 June 2020,
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/cook-a-classical-feast-nine-recipes-from-ancient-greece-and-rome/
Interesting, isn’t it? But this curiosity apart, and pace the gallant efforts of the BBC, here’s how the vegetable marrow is much more likely to appear these days. Ave et vale, veggie of my childhood! In spite of your insipidity I always rather liked you.
No comments:
Post a Comment