Skip to main content
Drink

Tarragon Vinboab

A vinegar infused with fresh tarragon leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Vinboab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather fresh tarragon just before it blossoms in late July or early August.

  2. Strip the tarragon from the larger stalks and bruise the leaves by twisting the branches.

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

  4. Pour enough vinegar to cover the tarragon completely.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Let it infuse for at least two months, or longer if desired.

  2. After infusion, strain the vinegar until clear and transfer it to small dry bottles.

  3. Cork the bottles well and store.

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 characteristic aroma and flavor that infuses into the vinegar.
Distilled or very pale vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts tarragon's flavor while keeping the final color clear.

The step that matters

Bruising the tarragon leaves. Twisting the branches bruises the leaves and breaks their cell walls, releasing aromatic oils so they can infuse into the vinegar more effectively.

“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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes