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Electric Saffron Tea Marinade

"When you smell this marinade you'll want to drink it! It's great with chicken and pork, and could also be thickened and used as a sauce if you reduce the salt a little. I marinated three pans of chicken legs with this recipe, and while covering with plastic wrap, two of then gave me a strong static shock....maybe just a coincidence, but nothing else has ever zapped while working in a kitchen."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Saffron and tarragon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 30 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

2 quarts
Prep15 min

Ingredients

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Pour the 2 quarts boiling water into a large heatproof pot or bowl, then add the tea bags and saffron threads and steep for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the tea bags and squeeze them gently against the side of the container before discarding them.

  3. Stir the brown sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, ground dried ginger, ground cloves and ground coriander into the hot tea until the sugar and salt dissolve.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice, rum flavored extract and chopped fresh tarragon.

  5. Let the marinade cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

  6. If using it for meat, marinate the meat in the refrigerator, and keep the marinade chilled throughout.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Saffron + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + tarragontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together884 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  5. Saffron + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, saffron, sugar, lemon, rum, pepper, ginger):

  1. Cardamombetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  3. Peppermintbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, saffron, sugar, lemon, rum, pepper, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).