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Vinegar for Salads
Put into a jar two handfuls of tarragon, half a handful of cress; the same of chervil and of the young leaves of the pimpernel, and two cloves of garlic; fill the jar with vinegar, cover it closely, and let it infuse for eight days; then strain and bottle it.
A cold infusion, so the only real variables are the herbs, the vinegar and the vessel. The one point that needs care is the pimpernel, which is not the plant most readers will picture.
- "Pimpernel" is ambiguousIn a salad context like this one it most likely means salad burnet (Poterium sanguisorba), a mild cucumber-flavoured salad herb known in French as pimprenelle; the name was also used in English for scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis), a wayside weed reckoned an irritant and no food plant. If you cannot buy salad burnet by that name from a nursery or herb grower, leave it out rather than substituting anything called pimpernel.
- HandfulsAn unstandardised measure, and the book means it loosely. Reckon a generous handful of tarragon as about 20-25 g of leafy sprigs; the half-handfuls are roughly 10 g each. Proportion matters more than absolute quantity: tarragon should dominate at about four parts to one of each of the others.
- TarragonUse French tarragon. Russian tarragon looks similar and is sold more widely, but it is coarse and nearly flavourless, and it will give you a vinegar that tastes of nothing much.
- CressGarden cress or land cress is the likeliest reading; watercress is wetter and will dilute the infusion. The point is a peppery note behind the anise of the tarragon.
- The vinegarThe recipe says only "vinegar". A white wine vinegar at 5 per cent acidity suits the herbs best; malt vinegar will bury them. Do not dilute it: the acidity is what keeps the infusion stable over eight days at room temperature.
- Vessel and jarGlass or glazed stoneware with a non-metallic lid. Vinegar attacks bare metal, and a metal cap left in contact with the liquid or its vapour will corrode and taint the batch.
- Bruise, then waitCrush the garlic cloves lightly and press the herbs before covering them so the leaves are fully submerged. Anything sitting above the surface will discolour and can go slimy. Eight days in a cool, dark cupboard is what the recipe asks; leaving it much longer tends to coarsen rather than strengthen the flavour.
- Straining and keepingStrain through muslin into clean, dry bottles and seal. A sprig added for looks should be fully covered by liquid. Kept out of the light it will hold its flavour for six months to a year, fading slowly.
- Yield and useThe recipe gives no jar size, so the yield depends entirely on the vessel you fill. Use it in a three-to-one oil and vinegar dressing, in béarnaise, or to deglaze a pan for chicken.
Herb-steeped vinegars were the standard way of carrying delicate summer flavours into the rest of the year before refrigeration, and tarragon vinegar was among the most prized of them; English cookery books picked it up as a genteel alternative to the sharp malt vinegar of the pickle jar. What marks this particular version as older in spirit is the herb list. Chervil, cress and salad burnet are the herbs of the old spring salad or "sallet" of many small leaves, and salad burnet in particular has slipped almost entirely out of the modern kitchen despite being one of the commonest salad plants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A good vinegar was treated as a piece of kitchen equipment: something a household made once and drew on all season.