Name: Tarragon Vinegar
Ingredients: fresh tarragon leaves; vinegar

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

fresh tarragon leaves
vinegar

Directions

Infuse

Loosely fill a jar with fresh tarragon leaves.
Pour vinegar into the jar until it reaches the height of the leaves.
Let it sit for two to three weeks in a warm place, preferably in the sun.

Strain and store

Strain the mixture through a cotton or flannel jelly bag.
If not clear enough, use isinglass or a little alum water to clarify.
Store in large bottles, corked tightly, in a dry place.

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.

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 leaves: Supply the main aroma and flavour that the vinegar takes up during infusion.
Vinegar: Acts as the solvent that extracts tarragon's aromatic compounds and carries the flavour.

“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.