Name: Prepared Vinegar for Spanish Salad Dressing
Ingredients: 1 pint cider vinegar; 1 button of garlic; 1 large slice cucumber; 1 slice onion; 1 tablespoon parsley; 1 tablespoon tarragon leaves; 2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar

Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Prepared Vinegar for Spanish Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Combine garlic, cucumber, onion, parsley, tarragon leaves, and tarragon vinegar in a bottle with cider vinegar.
Let the mixture stand for several days.
Strain the mixture and store for future salads and dressings.

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.

Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together274 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Garlic + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,556 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar: Provides the acidic base that carries the herb and aromatic flavours into the finished vinegar.
Garlic: Adds pungent aroma that infuses into the vinegar during standing.
Tarragon leaves: Contribute the characteristic aniseed aroma that steeps into the vinegar.
Tarragon vinegar: Adds more tarragon flavour to the already acidic base.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, garlic, cucumber, parsley, tarragon):

Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, garlic, cucumber, parsley, tarragon. 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.