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Tarragon Vinegar (Green tarragon is a herb)

Green tarragon is a herb and can be bought of the market gardeners in large cities. It is said to be best and strongest just as the plant is going into blossom. 1 pound of tarragon leaves. 4 quarts of white wine vinegar. Let steep in a stone jar two weeks.

Then filter it through a flannel jelly bag, add to it a quarter ounce of isinglass (gelatine will do) dissolved in warm cider or vinegar, to clarify it, bottle it and let it stand a month, when it is to be decanted into small bottles to keep.

But hotel cooks can never do all that, which is a foreign method for phlegmatic people. Reader, did you ever go into the bar-room of a back country hotel--say in Missouri--though Peck's Sun says Iowa--and see on the back shelf a series of home made extracts, jars of whiskey with something in it? One of these is tansy--green tansy leaves put in to flavor the liquor. That is for tansy bitters. Another has peaches. That is for peach and sugar. Others have cherries, lemon peel, orange peel. They are for we know not what. But tarragon can be steeped in cold vinegar like tansy in whisky, and half a pint of flavored vinegar thus be had at any time. Use it sparingly in place of part of the plain vinegar in any of the salad dressings, not flavoring strongly, however, as tarragon is a stranger to most of our people.