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Marinade
A marinade is a sort of flavoured pickle in which fish and meat are soaked for a while before being cooked. Sometimes the liquor and seasoning are boiled together, and allowed to go cold before being used. The marinade can then be employed again and again, if it be boiled occasionally. When a small quantity only is required, the marinade is used raw. Cooked Marinade.--Fry two onions, two carrots, two bay-leaves, three shallots, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, and a clove of garlic in three ounces of butter. Pour on one quart of water, and one quart of vinegar, and boil for three minutes. Add pepper and salt, and store for use. Raw Marinade (for small portions of food, such as fillets of fish, and slices of poultry).--Put a bunch of herbs and a sliced onion with a little pepper and salt into a dish; pour on them a gill of vinegar and a table-spoonful of oil.
Two working formulas rather than a dish: a large cooked marinade meant to be kept in the larder, and a small raw one mixed to order. The cooked version is the one that needs the most rethinking, because its keeping and reuse instructions belong to a cold larder and a different idea of food safety.
- Do not reuse itThe instruction to boil the marinade occasionally and use it "again and again" assumes a cold larder and a tolerance for risk that no modern kitchen shares. Once raw fish or meat has soaked in it, treat the liquid as waste; if you want a sauce from it, boil it hard for several minutes and use it at once.
- Storage"Store for use" means refrigerated, in a covered non-reactive container, for no more than about a week. Despite the vinegar, the butter, onion and garlic make it a poor candidate for the pantry shelf.
- A gillIn British usage a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, five fluid ounces (about 150 ml); the four-ounce, half-cup gill is the American measure. The raw marinade is therefore roughly 5 fl oz vinegar to 1 tablespoon oil — far sharper than a modern vinaigrette-style marinade, and intended for very short contact.
- YieldThe cooked marinade makes roughly two quarts, enough for several large joints or whole fish. For one meal, quarter it; the raw marinade dresses about a pound of fillets.
- The three-minute boilThree minutes barely extracts anything from carrot and thyme. Sweat the vegetables gently in the butter until soft, then simmer the liquid 15–20 minutes covered, and cool completely before use.
- Vinegar strengthVictorian vinegars were not standardised in strength, though malt and wine vinegars were broadly comparable to modern ones; either way, a full quart of vinegar to a quart of water is aggressive. Fish fillets in the raw marinade need 20–30 minutes at most before the acid begins to firm and whiten the flesh; meat can take several hours.
- Bunch of herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string, or bundled in a leek leaf. Tying it means you can lift it out rather than picking twigs off the fish.
- What it is forA marinade here is a preliminary step before cooking; the entry says the food is soaked "before being cooked" without naming the method. Drain and dry the food thoroughly before it meets the pan, or it will steam rather than colour.
Marinade came into English from French, and behind it stands the idea of the sea: French mariner, to pickle, from marin, the older sense being to steep something in brine. By the time Cassell's was compiled the salt had largely given way to vinegar, and the purpose had shifted from preservation to flavour and to tenderising the tougher cuts and the coarser river fish that a large Victorian household had to use up. It is scaffolding he larder, like stock or a browning, that a cook drew on across many recipes. The instruction that it will serve again and again, if it be boiled occasionally, is the tell: in a kitchen without refrigeration, repeated boiling was the only sterilising tool available, and it was trusted further than it deserved.