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Tarragon Vinegar

A vinegar infused with fresh tarragon leaves, used as a sauce 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 tarragon just before it blossoms.

  2. Strip the leaves from the larger stalks and place them in small stone jars or a wide-necked bottle.

  3. Twist the branches to bruise the leaves.

Steep

  1. Cover the tarragon with vinegar.

  2. Let it stand for 2 months or longer.

Strain and bottle

  1. Pour off and strain the mixture.

  2. Transfer to small bottles, cork well, and use as a sauce for 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
Supplies the aromatic oils that give the vinegar its characteristic flavour.
Vinegar
Acts as the steeping liquid, drawing flavour out of the leaves and adding sharp acidity.

The step that matters

Let it stand for 2 months or longer. Flavour moves from the leaves into the vinegar slowly. Stopping early leaves a weak, grassy taste, so the full steeping time is what gives the vinegar its strength.

“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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