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Tarragon Vinegar

A vinegar infused with tarragon leaves, parsley, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley 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 ↓

Tarragon Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Gather tarragon leaves on a dry day and wash them to remove insects.

  2. Dry the leaves and bruise them.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Add the bruised tarragon leaves to a quart of wine vinegar.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon each of chopped parsley and chives.

  3. Infuse the mixture for one week.

  4. Strain the vinegar and bottle it tightly.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Wine vinegar
Acts as the liquid base that extracts and carries the herb flavours.
Fresh tarragon leaves
Supply the main aroma and flavour that infuse into the vinegar.
Chopped parsley
Adds a fresh, green herbal note to the infused vinegar.
Chopped chives
Add a mild onion-like aroma to the infused vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying and bruising the leaves. Wet leaves dilute the vinegar and can spoil it, while bruising breaks cell walls so the aromatic oils and flavours release into the liquid during infusion.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Chivethe original

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