Name: Marinade for Wild Fowl
Ingredients: ½ cup claret; ½ cup water; 1-2 cloves bruised garlic; 1 teaspoon sage powder or juice; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; butter; stock (optional)

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Marinade for Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marinade

In a dripping pan, combine claret and water.
Add bruised garlic, sage, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Baste and serve

Baste the wild fowl with the marinade and then with butter.
When ready to serve, strain the marinade and mix well.
If needed, add stock and adjust seasoning.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together642 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together731 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Claret: Adds acidity and wine flavour that tenderises and deepens the taste of the fowl.
Butter: Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the skin brown and stay moist.
Sage: Contributes a savoury, aromatic herb flavour to the marinade.
Garlic: Adds pungent aroma that infuses the marinade and the meat.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, sage, nutmeg, pepper, butter):

Cinnamonfits better
Allspicefits better
Marjoramfits better
Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, sage, nutmeg, pepper, butter. 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.