Tarragon

• estragon

  French

• Estragon

  German

• estragonэстрагон

  Russian

• tarkhunaტარხუნა

  Georgian

  Also the name of a bright green Georgian soft drink flavoured with the herb, which is what a search for the word most often returns.

• tarkhunترخون

  Persian

• estragón

  Spanish

Sweet-anise and green at once, with a mild numbing tingle on the tongue that most cooks notice and few name — the same slight anaesthetic quality found in other estragole-rich plants. Russian tarragon has the green and almost none of the anise, which is why a dish made with it tastes vaguely of nothing in particular.

Anise, clearly, over a green grassy base with a faint bitterness behind it. The anise is not the sweet confectionery anise of aniseed but a sharper, more herbaceous version of it.

Bright green fresh, fading to a dull grey-green when dried.

Soft narrow leaves that wilt readily. Chopped tarragon bruises and darkens quickly.

• Estragole — The dominant compound in French tarragon and the source of the anise character — commonly the majority of the essential oil. It is also the compound the European regulator has assessed for concentrated preparations, which is recorded under safety.(what estragole is)
• Ocimene — Green and slightly sweet, and part of what distinguishes tarragon from a plain anise note.
• Anethole — Present in smaller quantity than estragole and reinforcing the same impression. It is the compound that dominates aniseed and fennel, which is why the three read as relatives despite being unrelated plants.(what anethole is)
• Sabinene — Woody and faintly peppery, sitting under the anise. Higher in Russian tarragon relative to the estragole, which is part of why that cultivar reads as coarse.(what sabinene is)

Add it late, and twice if the dish allows. Tarragon gives up its estragole quickly and loses it quickly, so the classical technique for béarnaise — infuse tarragon into the vinegar reduction, then chop more raw into the finished sauce — is not fussiness but the correct handling of a volatile compound: the first addition builds a base, the second supplies the aroma. Chop at the last moment, because cut surfaces darken and fade within the hour. In a long-cooked dish it will not survive, and the honest answer is that tarragon is not the herb for one.

A narrow and precise repertoire rather than a broad one. Tarragon belongs with eggs, chicken, butter sauces and vinegar: béarnaise above all, then omelettes and fines herbes, poulet à l’estragon, sauce gribiche and rémoulade, and with white fish and shellfish where its anise meets their sweetness. In Georgian and Persian cooking it is used more freely, on the raw herb plate and in green sauces. It does not belong with tomato, with most Mediterranean vegetable cookery or with anything that will cook for an hour.

• infusing — The classical use. Steeped in warm vinegar or in a reduction, tarragon gives up its estragole readily and the result keeps — tarragon vinegar is the standard French way of having the herb out of season.
• boiling — Loses the anise quickly. In a béarnaise the tarragon is infused into the reduction and then more is added raw at the end, which is a technique designed around exactly this.
• frying — Scorches and turns bitter, as every soft leaf herb does. Tarragon is added to fat off the heat rather than fried in it.
• grinding — Dried tarragon is sold rubbed rather than ground, and grinding accelerates the loss of what little estragole survived drying.

Crush a leaf and look for anise specifically, not for a general herbal smell. Tarragon that smells green without smelling of anise has lost the only thing that distinguishes it, and this is also the test for telling French tarragon from Russian at the point of purchase.

• No anise on crushing
• Grey rather than green
• A flat hay smell

• Volatilisation of estragole, which is the specific loss rather than a general fading
• Oxidation of the green fraction towards hay
• Colour loss from green to grey in the dried leaf

Asteraceae

A perennial to about 90 cm with slender, smooth, undivided leaves — narrow and pointed rather than the dissected foliage most Artemisia species carry. French tarragon rarely flowers and never sets viable seed; Russian tarragon flowers freely, seeds itself and grows coarser and taller.

Central Asia and southern Russia, with a native range extending across Siberia into western North America. The French cultivar is a European selection from that stock.

• France — major producer. Where the French cultivar is grown commercially and where the herb has its strongest culinary tradition.
• United States — notable producer
• Netherlands — notable producer
• Georgia — notable producer. Grown for domestic use and for tarkhuna, the soft drink made from it.
• Iran — notable producer

Cut before flowering, in the morning after the dew has gone. Oil content falls once the plant flowers, which in the French cultivar is rare in any case.

1. Cutting — Leafy stems cut before flowering, two or three times a season.
2. Stripping — Leaves stripped from the stems, which are woody and discarded.
3. Freezing or steeping — the preferred routes — Whole sprigs frozen, or steeped in white wine vinegar, which is the classical French preservation and produces an ingredient in its own right rather than a poor copy of the fresh herb.Why: Estragole is volatile and heat-labile. Both routes hold it in place — one by cold, one by dissolving it into a medium that is itself an ingredient — where drying drives it off.
4. Air-drying — Dried in shade at low temperature and sold as a pale green leaf. It is a considerably diminished product.Why: Recorded because it is sold rather than because it is recommended. Tarragon is among the herbs that dry worst, and the dried leaf keeps the grassy background while losing most of the anise that is the point of it.

Graded on colour, leaf-to-stem ratio and volatile oil where dried tarragon is traded at all. Cultivar is not usually declared, which is the omission that matters: Russian tarragon can meet every visual grading criterion and still taste of very little.

The substitution that occurs is cultivar rather than species: Russian tarragon sold as tarragon, which is botanically accurate and commercially misleading. Dried tarragon has also been reported bulked with other Asteraceae leaf, though the herb is too small a market to attract systematic adulteration.

A perennial cut two or three times a season. Plants lose vigour and aroma after three or four years and are replaced by dividing the rootstock, which also propagates them — the two operations are the same operation.

Temperate, and needing a cold dormancy to crop well the following year. French tarragon dislikes wet winters more than cold ones and rots in heavy ground, which is why it is short-lived in maritime climates and why gardeners are advised to replace plants every three years or so.

Buy it fresh, or buy tarragon vinegar, or freeze it. Dried tarragon is the one dried herb in this catalogue that is hard to recommend for anything, because what drying removes is precisely the anise the herb is bought for. If a recipe calls for tarragon and only the dried jar is available, the honest options are to use tarragon vinegar in place of part of the liquid, or to accept that the dish will not taste of tarragon and season it some other way.

• A clear anise smell when a leaf is crushed — the single test that separates French tarragon from Russian.
• Bright green, unwilted, with no darkening at the cut ends.
• For plants: bought as a plant rather than grown from seed, since seed cannot be the French cultivar.
• For dried: recent stock, and low expectations.

Commercial grading covers colour, leaf-to-stem ratio and volatile oil where the dried herb is traded. None of those parameters distinguishes the two cultivars, so a grading certificate can be entirely satisfied by a herb with almost no aroma.

Tarragon reached western Europe comparatively late for a herb of its standing — it is not in the classical Mediterranean repertoire, and its native range is Central Asian rather than European. The name descends through Arabic tarkhun and Latin dracunculus, "little dragon", a reference variously attributed to the serpentine roots or to a doctrine-of-signatures belief that it treated snakebite. Its place in French cooking is a product of the codification of that cuisine rather than of great antiquity.

A small trade dominated by fresh and frozen produce rather than dried spice, because the dried product is so much weaker. France, the Netherlands and the United States account for most commercial cultivation.

A European record as a digestive and appetite stimulant, and the snakebite association preserved in the name. Recorded as tradition; SpiceHQ makes no health claim on that basis.