Skip to main content
Sauce

Mint Sauce

A simple mint sauce made with mint, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper, served with roast lamb.

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

Why it works: Vinegar and sugar 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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pick off the tender leaves of the mint, discarding the large, hard outer leaves.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped mint, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. Mix well until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Serve with roast lamb.

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

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

  2. Mint + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Mint
Provides the fresh, aromatic herb flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, tangy bite.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Mix well until the sugar dissolves. Sugar dissolves slowly in cold acidic liquid, so undissolved crystals can leave the sauce gritty and unevenly sweet. Thorough mixing lets the sugar fully dissolve into the vinegar, giving a smooth, balanced sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Peppermintfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mint, 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

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes