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Tarragon Vinegar

A vinegar infused with fresh tarragon leaves, used as a sauce for meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather fresh tarragon just before it blossoms.

  2. Strip the leaves from the larger stalks and twist the branches to bruise the leaves.

  3. Place the tarragon in small stone jars or wide-necked bottles.

  4. Pour enough vinegar over the tarragon to cover it completely.

Steep and bottle

  1. Let it stand for two months or longer.

  2. Afterward, pour off the vinegar, strain it, and transfer it into small dry bottles.

  3. Cork the bottles well and use the vinegar as a sauce for meats.

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 + 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
Provides the main aromatic flavour that infuses into the vinegar.
Vinegar
Extracts the tarragon's flavour and adds acidity to the finished condiment.

The step that matters

Covering the tarragon completely with vinegar. Leaves exposed to air can spoil or discolour during the long steeping, so the vinegar must fully cover the herb to keep it submerged and preserved.

“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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