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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 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 clarify

  1. After two weeks, strain the mixture and squeeze the herbs.

  2. Let it stand for one day to settle, then 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 aromatic flavour that defines the finished vinegar.
Savory
Adds a peppery, aromatic note to the infused vinegar.
Chives
Contributes a mild oniony aroma and fresh green flavour.
Eschalots
Adds a gentle savoury sweetness and onion-like depth.
Best vinegar
Acts as the solvent that draws flavour out of the herbs.

The step that matters

Pounding the herbs before infusing. Bruising the herbs breaks cell walls so their volatile oils and flavour compounds release into the vinegar. Drying them first keeps extra water from diluting the vinegar and encouraging spoilage.

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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