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Raw Marinade

A mixture of wine, garlic, onion, herbs, and spices used to marinate meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,768 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Raw Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the marinade

  1. In a bowl, combine the wine, garlic, onion, tarragon, peppercorns, bay leaf, thyme, and basil.

Marinate and cook

  1. Soak the meat in the marinade for 24 hours.

  2. Use the marinade in the cooking process.

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. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Tarragon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together528 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Tarragon + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

Wine
Acidity and liquid that carry the flavour of the herbs into the meat.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during marinating.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury aroma to the marinade.

The step that matters

Soak the meat in the marinade for 24 hours. Marinating for a long, set time lets the acid and aromatics penetrate the surface of the meat. Leaving it too short gives weak flavour, and very long soaking can make the surface mushy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, clove, garlic, tarragon, thyme, basil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, clove, garlic, tarragon, thyme, basil. 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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