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Elder-Flower and Tarragon Vinegar
Fill a bottle with the elder-flowers, and pour upon them as much vinegar as they will take; let them rest for a fortnight, when the vinegar may be strained and put into bottles of smaller size. The fresh-gathered leaves of any sweet herb may be infused, and their flavour extracted in the same manner.
A cold infusion that still works exactly as written, provided the raw material is right. Two things decide the result: what goes into the bottle and how acidic the vinegar is.
- Flowers only, no green partsUse the creamy florets shaken or snipped from the stalks; the green stems, leaves and unripe berries of elder contain cyanogenic compounds and taste bitter besides. Gather heads on a dry morning when they smell of muscat rather than cat, and shake rather than wash them: much of the aroma is generally held to sit in the pollen, which rinsing carries away.
- Which vinegarA white wine vinegar at 5 to 6 per cent acidity gives the clearest result and lets the flower through; distilled malt is harsh and cider vinegar muddies the colour. Acidity matters for keeping as well as flavour, so avoid the low-acid "drinking" vinegars sold for shrubs.
- A fortnight, cool and darkTwo weeks is right for elder-flower. Keep the bottle out of direct sun and turn or shake it every couple of days; sunlight browns the vinegar and flattens the aroma.
- Tarragon, as the title promisesTarragon, as the heading promises -- The text itself names no herb; tarragon simply falls under "any sweet herb", and it wants slightly different handling. Use French tarragon rather than the coarser Russian sort, cut just before it flowers, bruise the sprigs lightly, and give it three to four weeks rather than two.
- Straining and bottlingStrain through muslin, then through a second dampened layer if the liquid is cloudy, and bottle in scalded glass with a plastic-lined or cork closure. Vinegar corrodes bare metal caps, which will taint a good infusion within weeks.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no quantities. A wine bottle loosely packed with flowers will take something in the region of half a litre of vinegar, and yields a little less after straining. Stored in a cool cupboard it keeps a year or more, though the perfume is at its best in the first few months.
- Using itElder-flower vinegar suits a cucumber or green-leaf salad, gooseberries and oily fish; tarragon vinegar is the classic acid in a bearnaise and is used in remoulade and in mustard-based dressings.
Herb and flower vinegars appear in English household books from the seventeenth century onward, valued as much for the still-room as the kitchen: elder-flower preparations turn up in old domestic manuals as cosmetic washes and household remedies as well as at table. The technique is the simplest form of cold extraction, and it belongs to a household economy in which the elder hedge was free and the vinegar barrel already in the pantry. The entry ends by handing the same procedure to any sweet herb, so the point is the method rather than the plant; tarragon vinegar is the version that survived into professional kitchens, where it seasons bearnaise.