Name: Tarragon Vinegar
Ingredients: fresh tarragon; distilled or very pale 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
distilled or very pale vinegar

Directions

Prepare

Gather fresh tarragon just before it blossoms, in late July or early August.
Strip the leaves from the larger stalks and bruise them by twisting and wringing.
Place the tarragon in small stone jars or wide-necked bottles.
Pour enough vinegar to cover the tarragon completely.

Infuse and bottle

Let it infuse for at least two months, or longer if desired.
When ready, strain the vinegar to remove the leaves and pour it into small dry bottles.
Cork the bottles well to preserve the vinegar.

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: Supplies the aromatic flavour that the vinegar takes up during infusion.
Distilled or very pale vinegar: Acts as the solvent that draws out the tarragon's flavour and carries it.

“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.