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Tarragon Vinegar
Use fresh tarragon leaves if available, otherwise take dried leaves; into a sterilized quart fruit jar put a cup of leaves and fill the jar with choice cider or wine vinegar. Cover and let stand in a cool place two or three weeks; strain through a napkin or felt bag, bottle, and secure with a close fitting cork. 4 quarts raspberries 6 cups sugar
A straightforward cold infusion that needs almost nothing from a modern cook except patience and the right vinegar. Note that the stray line at the end — "4 quarts raspberries 6 cups sugar" — belongs to the recipe that followed in the original book and has nothing to do with the tarragon.
- The hinge: acidityUse a vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity, which covers virtually all commercial cider and wine vinegar. Herbs steeped in a weak or homemade vinegar of unknown strength are a different proposition entirely; the acid is what keeps the infusion safe over weeks at room temperature.
- Quart jar and quantitiesA quart is 4 cups, so this is about one cup of leaves to a little under a litre of vinegar once the leaves fill part of the jar. Fresh tarragon is best lightly bruised rather than chopped; dried tarragon is stronger by volume, so less than the full cup will do.
- Which tarragonFrench tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus var. sativa) is what the anise flavour comes from. Russian tarragon, which is what most seed-grown plants turn out to be, is coarse and nearly flavourless and will produce a disappointing vinegar.
- "A cool place"A cupboard or cellar away from the stove, cooler than the working kitchen. Direct sun will fade the leaves and dull the flavour; a modern kitchen cabinet on an outside wall does the job.
- StrainingA napkin or felt bag means a fine cloth filter. Doubled cheesecloth or a coffee filter works; the aim is to remove every fragment of leaf, since anything left floating will eventually soften and cloud the bottle.
- BottlingBottle into sterilised glass and avoid metal caps unless they are lined — vinegar corrodes bare metal. The recipe's "close fitting cork" is doing the same job as a modern plastic-lined screw cap.
- Yield and keepingA little under a quart. Kept sealed and out of the light it holds its flavour for six months to a year, after which the tarragon note softens.
- A decorative sprigIf you want a whole sprig standing in the finished bottle, it must be fully submerged in the strained vinegar. Any plant material sitting above the liquid line will mould.
Flavoured vinegars were a staple of the nineteenth-century preserving pantry: vinegar was the household's other great preservative alongside sugar and salt, and a shelf of tarragon, chilli, garlic and raspberry vinegars gave a cook year-round seasoning from a summer garden. Tarragon vinegar in particular came into English and American kitchens by way of French cookery, where it is the traditional acid in a classic bearnaise and is used in some Dijon-style tarragon mustards; the herb's name traces through French estragon and, it is generally said, ultimately to an Arabic and Greek line of words meaning little dragon, a reference variously explained by the coiled roots or the forked shape of the leaf. Tarragon is widely held to lose much of its character when dried, which is part of why putting it up in vinegar was a practical way to keep the flavour past the summer.