Last month I watch a video about cooking at Monticello and she mentioned the importance of tarragon there.  She even mentioned that Thomas Jefferson liked tarragon vinegar.  My tarragon was growing like crazy already so I was intrigued about how to use more of this herb.

In searching for the Monticello tarragon vinegar recipe I found A Requiem for Tarragon.  It discussed the sad decline of its use in fancy restaurants, speculating that even Jefferson would have moved on.  This made me more determined that ever to use my tarragon.  So first I immediately made Poulet a l’Estragon, and it was incredibly good.  It was not strongly flavored as I expected but just lovely.

Then I proceeded to find a tarragon vinegar recipe, and this is the one I found.  It is from Round the Table- Notes on Cookery, and Plain Recipes, with a Selection of Bills of Fare for Every Month By Victor Chevalley de Rivaz · 1876.

So here is my tarragon vinegar starting in a glass jar rather than a stone one.

And here it is after being exposed to the sun for a fortnight.

And here it is strained.

The first thing I did with it was make the Creamy Tarragon-Mustand Dressing from The Silver Plate Cookbook as mentioned in the requiem for tarragon.

The recipe makes a huge amount of dressing so there is way too much on this salad.  And it takes raw eggs so not to be used with supermarket eggs.  But again it was tasty, not strongly flavored, but lovely.  Next I will try just a vinegar and oil dressing with the vinegar, but I thought I would report on my tarragon progress.