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Marinade for Fish

A liquid mixture of water, oil, vinegar, onion, carrots, garlic, cloves, and aromatics used to flavor fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Marinade for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marinade

  1. Simmer water, oil, and vinegar with onion, carrots, garlic, and cloves for a few minutes.

  2. Pour the marinade over cold fish.

Make the raw marinade

  1. For raw marinade, mix vinegar or lemon juice with salad oil, onion, bouquet garni, tomato, and peppercorns.

  2. Stir and pour over the fish, turning it occasionally.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps firm the fish surface.
Oil
Carries flavour and keeps the fish moist during marinating.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour that mellows and sweetens when simmered.
Carrots
Adds sweetness and savoury body to the simmered marinade.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, onion, carrot, clove, garlic, parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, carrot, clove, garlic, parsley, thyme. 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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