Skip to main content
Drink

Tarragon Vinegar

A vinegar infused with tarragon leaves, clarified with isinglass, aged for a month.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White wine and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Tarragon Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Gather tarragon leaves just before they blossom.

  2. Combine tarragon leaves and white wine vinegar in a stone jar.

  3. Let the mixture infuse for 16 days.

  4. Drain and strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

Fine and bottle

  1. Dissolve isinglass in Sherry wine and add it for every 2 gallons of vinegar.

  2. Shake well in a large stone bottle for 2 days.

  3. Let it sit for 1 month to fine.

  4. Transfer to clean, dry glass bottles, cork, and seal securely.

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. White wine + sherrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tarragon + white winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together409 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tarragon leaves
Provide the main aromatic flavour that defines the vinegar.
White wine vinegar
Acts as the base liquid that extracts and carries the tarragon flavour.
Isinglass
Fining agent that gathers suspended particles so they settle, clearing the vinegar.

The step that matters

Drain and strain the mixture through a flannel bag. Leaving plant solids in the vinegar lets them keep extracting flavour and can cloud the liquid, so the infused vinegar should be fully separated from the leaves before fining.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, sherry, wine):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, sherry, wine. 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesWine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipes