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Marinade
This is a French culinary term which signifies a brine, in which fish, flesh, or fowl may be soaked for a while before cooking them. By doing this a considerable addition is made to the flavor of the article marinaded. Marinades may be either cooked or raw, the former being used either hot or cold. Stew together a finely-sliced onion and four parsley roots, adding one pint of vinegar and four quarts of fresh water; also a quarter of a bunch of thyme, six bay leaves, twenty-four whole peppers, and twelve cloves. Cook these for thirty minutes on a brisk fire, then put them in a stone jar and keep them in a cool place for use.
A house marinade in the French style, written for a hotel kitchen that turned over gallons of it a week. The proportions are enormous by domestic standards and the keeping instructions predate refrigeration.
- Yield, and scaling downAs written this makes roughly four and a half quarts. Quartering it gives about a quart, which will cover two or three pounds of meat or fish in a snug non-reactive dish.
- Parsley rootsMost likely Hamburg parsley, a white taproot still sold in Eastern European groceries and some farmers' markets, though the roots of ordinary parsley were also used. If you cannot find it, use a small parsnip plus a generous handful of parsley stems for the herbal note.
- "Brisk fire"A hard, rolling boil. The recipe does not say whether the pot is covered; left uncovered, thirty minutes will reduce the volume somewhat and concentrate the spice.
- Whole peppersBlack peppercorns. Twenty-four in four and a half quarts is restrained seasoning, not a peppery marinade.
- It is not actually a brineOscar calls it one, but there is no salt in the formula at all. Salt your meat or fish separately before or after marinating, or the result will taste flat.
- The acid is weakOne pint of vinegar to four quarts of water is heavily diluted, closer to an aromatic soaking liquid than a pickle. It will perfume the food but will not tenderize or preserve it, and it will not hold spoilage in check on its own.
- Storage"A stone jar in a cool place" meant a cellar or larder. Refrigerate the strained liquid in a covered non-reactive container and use it within a week.
- Marinating and reusingMarinate under refrigeration, not on the counter: an hour or two for fish fillets, up to overnight for larger cuts of meat. Liquid that has held raw meat or fish should be discarded, or boiled hard for several minutes before it goes anywhere near a sauce.
Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, not a cook, but his 1896 compilation set down the working formulas of a large French-trained hotel brigade, and this is a good example: not a dish but a component, mixed in bulk and drawn on as needed. The word comes through French from a root meaning of the sea, the same as marine — an old sense of preserving in brine that survives in the Italian marinare. Here the purpose is flavoring rather than keeping, which is exactly what Oscar says at the outset. The heavy hand with bay, clove and thyme, and the use of parsley root as an aromatic vegetable, mark it as continental European rather than American cooking; parsley root was long a common kitchen vegetable in Europe while remaining a specialty item in the United States.