  Elek and Lippner (2010) showed that the convergence of a sequence of
bounded-degree graphs implies the existence of a limit for the proportion of
vertices covered by a maximum matching. We provide a characterization of the
limiting parameter via a local recursion defined directly on the limit of the
graph sequence. Interestingly, the recursion may admit multiple solutions,
implying non-trivial long-range dependencies between the covered vertices. We
overcome this lack of correlation decay by introducing a perturbative parameter
(temperature), which we let progressively go to zero. This allows us to
uniquely identify the correct solution. In the important case where the graph
limit is a unimodular Galton-Watson tree, the recursion simplifies into a
distributional equation that can be solved explicitly, leading to a new
asymptotic formula that considerably extends the well-known one by Karp and
Sipser for Erd\"os-R\'enyi random graphs.
