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Sauce

Mint Sauce

A condiment made from mint leaves, brown sugar, and white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chopped mint leaves, brown sugar, and white wine vinegar in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture soak for 1 hour.

  3. Stir well 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. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mint + white winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mint leaves
Provides the main fresh, aromatic mint flavour of the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity and draws flavour out of the chopped mint leaves.

The step that matters

Let the mixture soak for 1 hour. Vinegar and sugar slowly draw flavour out of the chopped mint and dissolve the sugar. Rushing this step leaves the sauce sharp, sweet, and weakly flavoured.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, 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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