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Vinegar for Salads

A vinegar infused with tarragon, chives, shallots, mint, and balm, steeped for two weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Vinegar for Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry and pound the tarragon, chives, shallots, mint, and balm.

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

  3. Add 1 gallon of best vinegar and cork the bottle tightly.

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

Strain and settle

  1. After two weeks, strain the mixture.

  2. Squeeze the herbs to extract remaining liquid.

  3. Let the liquid sit for one day to settle.

  4. Strain the liquid 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. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

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

  2. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 flavor that defines the vinegar.
Chives
Adds a mild onion-like aroma and fresh green flavor.
Shallots
Contributes a gentle savory sweetness and onion depth.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor and aroma from the herbs.

The step that matters

Squeeze the herbs to extract remaining liquid. Herbs hold a lot of vinegar within their cell structure. Squeezing releases this flavored liquid, but over-pressing can push out plant particles that cloud the final vinegar, so press gently before the settling and filtering step.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chive, shallot, 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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