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Mint Sauce, to Serve with Koast Lamb

A simple mint sauce made with fresh mint, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mint Sauce, to Serve with Koast Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the mint and remove the leaves from the stalks.

  2. Mince the leaves very finely and place them in a bowl.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the sugar and vinegar, then stir until the sugar dissolves.

  2. For best flavor, let the sauce sit for 2 to 3 hours before serving.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mint + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mint
Supplies the herbal aroma and fresh flavor that define the sauce.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity and tang that makes the sauce sharp and bright.

The step that matters

Let the sauce sit before serving. Mint's aromatic oils and flavor compounds slowly infuse into the sweetened vinegar over time. Serving immediately gives a weaker, less rounded flavor.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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.

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