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Tarragon Vinegar
Place two bunches of fresh tarragon in a quart preserving jar, fill the jar with white wine vinegar, cover tightly, and set away in a cool, dark place for two or three weeks; then strain, and bottle. Fill the jar once more with fresh vinegar, and set away. This will be ready to use in a month, but it need not be strained until the first is used.
A cold infusion that asks almost nothing of the cook, but a few details decide whether the result tastes of tarragon or of wet hay.
- "Two bunches" in practical termsMarket bunches vary, but reckon on something like 1.5 to 2 oz of leafy stems in total, enough to fill the quart jar loosely before the vinegar goes in. Too little herb and a quart of vinegar simply swamps it.
- Get French tarragonArtemisia dracunculus var. sativa is the anise-scented kind and the one meant here. Russian tarragon, common in garden centres and sometimes sold as seed, is coarse and nearly flavourless; French tarragon rarely sets viable seed and is normally propagated from cuttings or division.
- Dry the herb before it goes inWash the sprigs and let them dry completely on a towel. Water clinging to the leaves dilutes the vinegar slightly, and it costs nothing to avoid.
- Vinegar strengthUse a white wine vinegar labelled 5 per cent acidity, which is standard on supermarket shelves. Keep the herb fully submerged; any leaf poking above the surface will darken and can mould.
- Non-reactive lidVinegar corrodes bare metal. A modern two-piece canning lid is lacquered and fine for a few weeks, but a plastic storage cap or a layer of parchment under the lid is better for a month-long steep.
- Cool and dark means itLight bleaches the tarragon to grey-brown and flattens the aroma. A cupboard at room temperature works; a sunny windowsill does not, whatever it looks like.
- The second fillingThe spent leaves still hold plenty of oil, which is why the jar is refilled. The second batch is noticeably milder and takes the full month; treat it as a table vinegar rather than one for a sauce that depends on tarragon.
- Strain properly and storePour through a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter or muslin so no leaf fragments remain, then bottle. Kept sealed and dark it holds its flavour six months to a year; a decorative sprig dropped into the finished bottle looks well but will eventually go slack and cloud the vinegar.
- YieldAbout a quart from each filling, roughly two quarts in all.
Tarragon vinegar earns its own entry in books of this period because tarragon was hard to keep any other way: the leaves lose their anise character almost entirely on drying, and steeping them in vinegar was often said to be a household method of holding the flavour through the winter. The herb itself is strongly associated with French cookery, where it is one of the fines herbes and a defining note of béarnaise, and tarragon vinegar was commonly a starting point for béarnaise, tartare sauce and salad dressings. Its Latin name, dracunculus, means "little dragon", generally traced to the serpentine coiling of its roots, though the herbals also claimed it as a remedy for bites. The double infusion here reflects thrift as much as flavour: a bunch of garden herbs was too valuable to be thrown out after one use.