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Mint Sauce

A condiment of mint, orange rind, vinegar, and sugar served with roast lamb or mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and orange work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 549 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a basin, combine the chopped mint and grated orange rind.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, bring the vinegar to a boil and stir in the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the mint and orange rind.

Serve

  1. Serve with roast lamb or mutton.

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 + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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. Orange + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Fresh mint
Provides the main aroma and herbal flavour of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Orange rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma that complements the mint.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, 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.

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