Skip to main content
Sauce

Mir Mint

A tart mint and lemon vinegar sauce made with mint, lemon rind, vinegar, lemon juice, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mint and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mir Mint

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a sauce tureen, combine the chopped mint and lemon rind.

  2. Add the vinegar and lemon juice.

  3. Dissolve as much powdered sugar as the mixture will absorb.

  4. Let the solution stand for about an hour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Mint + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mint
Adds fresh, aromatic herbal flavour to the sauce.
Lemon rind
Its oils add concentrated lemon aroma without extra liquid.
French vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and fresh citrus flavour.
Powdered loaf sugar
Sweetness that softens and balances the sharpness of the acids.

The step that matters

Dissolve as much powdered sugar as the mixture will absorb. Finely powdered sugar dissolves much more readily in an acidic liquid than coarse sugar. Adding it gradually and tasting lets you balance sweetness against sourness, since too little leaves the sauce harsh and too much makes it cloying.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes