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Tarragon Vinegar

A vinegar infused with fresh tarragon, used as a condiment for meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,547 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tarragon Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather fresh tarragon just before it blossoms.

  2. Bruise and twist the tarragon.

  3. Fill bottles with the bruised tarragon.

  4. Pour enough vinegar over the tarragon to cover it.

Steep and store

  1. Let the mixture stand for a couple of months.

  2. Pour off the vinegar and cork it for winter use.

  3. Serve with meats.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh tarragon
Provides the aromatic flavour that infuses into the vinegar.
Good vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts tarragon's aroma and carries it as a flavoured liquid.

The step that matters

Bruise and twist the tarragon. Bruising breaks open the leaf tissue so the aromatic oils and flavour compounds are released into the vinegar. Whole, unbruised leaves infuse slowly and weakly over the steeping period.

“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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