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Beef in a Marinade

A dish of sliced sirloin marinated in vinegar, water, and seasonings, then stewed with port wine, mushroom ketchup, shallot vinegar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef in a Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marinade

  1. Combine vinegar and water in a bowl.

  2. Add sliced carrots, onions, salt, peppercorns, and garlic.

  3. Simmer until the vegetables release their flavor.

  4. Strain the mixture and allow it to cool.

Marinate and cook

  1. Soak the meat in the marinade for 24 hours.

  2. Gently stew the marinated meat in gravy until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in port wine, mushroom ketchup, shallot vinegar, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Serve the meat on a dish and pour the sauce over it.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Carrot + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,930 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin
The main meat, which becomes tender as it soaks and then stews.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps soften the meat fibres during the long soak.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Soak the meat in the marinade for 24 hours. The acid in the vinegar slowly softens the meat's fibres. Too short a soak leaves the meat tough, and the long soak must be paired with gentle cooking so the meat stays tender rather than dry.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, carrot, onion, garlic, port wine, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, carrot, onion, garlic, port wine, mushroom, ketchup. 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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