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French Salad Vinegar

A vinaigrette made by pounding herbs and eschalots, steeping in wine vinegar, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 589 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Salad Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the eschalots, sweet savoury, chives, tarragon, dried mint leaves, and balm together in a mortar.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a small stone jar.

Infuse

  1. Fill the jar with strong white wine vinegar and cork it securely.

  2. Let it stand in the sun for two weeks.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag and bottle for use.

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. Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tarragon + minttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eschalots
Contribute a mild onion flavour that carries into the vinegar during infusion.
Tarragon
Provides the characteristic aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour of French vinegar.
Chives
Add a delicate oniony freshness to the infused vinegar.
Strong white wine vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts and carries the herbs' aromas and flavours.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar before the sun infusion. A tightly corked jar keeps the vinegar from evaporating and limits contamination during the two-week standing period, so the infusion stays concentrated and clean-tasting.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

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

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