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Sauce

Marinade

A vegetable and herb mixture simmered with wine or cider, then strained for use.

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.

Make the marinade

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the chopped vegetables, parsley, and sweet herbs.

  2. Fry the mixture for a few minutes.

  3. Gradually add the wine or cider.

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

  5. 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
Add sweetness and aromatic body to the marinade's flavour base.
Onions
Provide savoury depth and sweetness as they soften and release flavour during frying.
Wine or cider
Supplies the acidic liquid that carries and extracts flavour from the aromatics.
Butter
Carries fat-soluble aromatics and helps the vegetables fry gently in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables. Frying the chopped vegetables in butter until softened and lightly coloured builds the flavour base. Adding liquid too early leaves the vegetables tasting raw and flat.

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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