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Vinegar for Salads

A vinegar infused with tarragon, savory, chives, eschalots, mint, and balm, steeped in sun for two weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 589 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vinegar for Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry and pound the tarragon, savory, chives, eschalots, mint, and balm.

  2. Put the herbs into a wide-mouthed bottle.

Infuse

  1. Add 1 gallon of best vinegar and cork it tightly.

  2. Place the bottle in the sun for two weeks.

Strain and settle

  1. After two weeks, strain off the vinegar.

  2. Squeeze the herbs.

  3. Let it stand for one day to settle.

  4. Strain it through a filtering bag.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Tarragon + minttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Chive + minttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Chive + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,065 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

Tarragon
Gives the vinegar its characteristic aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour.
Chives
Adds a mild onion-like aroma that lifts the vinegar.
Eschalots
Contributes a mild savoury, onion-like depth to the infusion.
Best vinegar
Acts as the solvent, extracting aromatic compounds from the herbs over time.

The step that matters

Keeping the bottle corked during the two-week infusion. A tight cork keeps air and contaminants out while the herbs steep, protecting the vinegar from spoilage and off-flavours during the long sun exposure.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chive, vinegar. 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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