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Beef in a Marinade

Sliced sirloin beef marinated in vinegar, water, and seasonings, then stewed with carrots, onions, and sauce of 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, then strain and cool.

  4. Soak the beef in the marinade for 24 hours.

Stew and serve

  1. Gently stew the marinated beef in gravy until tender.

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

  3. Serve the beef 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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sirloin beef
Becomes tender and flavorful through soaking and slow stewing in the gravy.
Butter, rolled in flour
Flour and butter thicken the sauce, giving it body and a smooth, glossy texture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Vinegar
Acidity in the marinade helps soften the beef fibers and adds tang.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Soak the beef in the marinade for 24 hours. The acidic vinegar marinade slowly works into the meat and loosens its fibers. Too short a soak leaves the beef firmer, while the long soak lets the flavor penetrate and the texture soften before stewing.

Swap the clove

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

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

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