MARINADE.
The word marinade, as you all know, really means pickle, but viewed in the light in which we now regard it it would be better to describe it as a mixture, the component parts of which can be varied at pleasure, in which meat may be soaked for several hours before it is cooked. Its immediate effect is to preserve the outside of the meat which has felt the knife moist and juicy, to increase its tenderness, to prevent its turning, and to lend that subtle flavour to it—so hard to describe—but which just makes the difference between our ordinary cutlet and that which we remember having eaten at some restaurant abroad, or at the table of a friend who possessed a really well-educated cook.
The common form of marinade for beef and mutton is composed of salad oil and vinegar in the proportion of four tablespoonfuls of the former to one of the latter, with one shallot or small onion sliced, one clove of garlic (if approved), a bay leaf, twelve whole peppers,six cloves, a saltspoonful of salt, a couple of teaspoonfuls of dried thyme or marjoram, a tablespoonful of minced parsley, and a strip or two ofvery finely pared lemon peel. This mixture can be preserved for daily use, with slight additions from time to time, and the flavour can be modified by changing the sweet herbs, or withdrawing them.
The taste of game can be imparted to cold cooked mutton by placing the meat in a marinade composed of a claret glass each of vinegar, port wine, and mushroom ketchup, in which a tablespoonful of red currant jelly has been dissolved, with a teaspoonful of “spiced pepper,” six peppercorns, a saltspoonful of salt, a chopped onion, and a dessertspoonful of marjoram and thyme blended. A hash of cold mutton slices that have lain a few hours in this preparation is very like that of venison, and a hashmade of cold hare (a little underdone in the roasting) similarly steeped all day, is really excellent. In this particular instance you must strain the marinade, and add it to the thick sauce in which the hare or mutton has to be simmered. If proper care be taken in making the sauce, and heating up the cold meat therein very gently—a process that should be conducted in the bain-marie—these hashes are worthy of a place among entrées of the first class. French beans are their most suitable garnish.
Marinade need not be made in extravagant quantities. It