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Vinegar for Salads

A vinegar infused with tarragon, savory, chives, eschalots, mint, and balm, steeped 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 the herbs.

  2. Pound the herbs.

  3. Put the herbs into a wide-mouthed bottle, then add 1 gallon of best vinegar.

  4. Cork the bottle tightly.

Infuse and strain

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

  2. Strain off the vinegar, then 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
Provides the main aroma and flavour that the vinegar takes on during infusing.
Savory
Adds a peppery, aromatic note to the infused vinegar.
Chives
Contributes a mild onion-like aroma to the vinegar.
Eschalots
Adds a mild savoury, onion-like flavour to the vinegar.
Mint tops
Adds a fresh, cooling aroma to the infused vinegar.
Balm tops
Adds a light lemony aroma to the infused vinegar.

The step that matters

Cork the bottle tightly. A tight cork keeps air and outside contaminants from getting in during the two-week infusion, and it holds the herb aromas in the vinegar rather than letting them escape.

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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