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Sauce

Mint Sauce

A simple sauce made from mint, vinegar, sugar, and optionally lamb cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and lamb work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 772 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped mint, vinegar, and sugar, then mix well until the sugar dissolves.

  2. If desired, add the lamb cooking liquid for extra flavor.

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 + lambtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together772 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. Vinegar + lambtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together509 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + lambtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together429 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mint
Provides the herbal, aromatic flavor that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sauce and cuts through rich lamb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the vinegar's sharpness, and must dissolve fully for an even taste.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar. Sugar that stays undissolved leaves grains in the sauce and makes the sweetness uneven. Mixing until it fully dissolves in the vinegar gives a smooth sauce with balanced sweet and sour flavor.

Swap the mint

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

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

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