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Beef in a Marinade

A stew of sirloin beef marinated in vinegar, water, and seasonings, simmered with port wine, mushroom ketchup, 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

Prepare the marinade

  1. Cut the sirloin into slices.

  2. In a pot, combine vinegar, water, sliced carrots, sliced onion, salt, peppercorns, and garlic.

  3. Stew the mixture until the vegetables are tender.

  4. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Marinate and cook

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

  2. Stew the marinated beef in a little gravy until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add port wine, mushroom ketchup, shallot vinegar, and butter rolled in flour to the pot.

  2. 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
Main protein that becomes tender after soaking and stewing.
Vinegar
Acidic base of the marinade that helps soften and flavour the meat.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce and adds richness through fat and starch.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Soaking the beef in the marinade. The acidic marinade needs time to penetrate and soften the muscle fibres, so the full 24 hours matter for tenderness. Soaking too briefly leaves the beef firmer and less flavourful.

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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