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Marinade

A simmered vegetable and spice liquid used as a flavoring or marinating agent.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the carrots, onions, shallots, and garlic.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

Make the marinade

  1. Add the chopped vegetables, parsley, and sweet herbs to the butter and fry the mixture for a few minutes.

  2. Gradually add the wine or cider.

  3. Stir in the salt, peppercorns, allspice, and cloves.

  4. Simmer for 30 minutes, then strain the liquid for use.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Adds sweetness and aroma to the marinade as they soften and release flavour.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and savoury depth as they soften in the butter.
Butter
Carries the frying fat that helps release aromatic compounds from the vegetables.
Light wine or cider
Provides acidity and liquid that extracts flavour from the vegetables and spices.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, onion, shallot, garlic, butter, parsley, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, shallot, garlic, butter, parsley, wine. 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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