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Sauce

A Good Mint Sauce

A sauce made from finely chopped mint, sugar, and cider vinegar, left to stand for days before serving with meats, especially mutton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

A Good Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Chop the fresh green mint very finely.

  2. Add sugar and good cider vinegar to the chopped mint.

  3. Let the mixture stand for several days before using.

Serve

  1. Serve with meats, especially 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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 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. Mint + cidertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh green mint
Provides the main herbal aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and gradually softens the mint over standing.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for several days before using. Standing lets the vinegar and sugar draw flavour out of the chopped mint and mellow the sharpness. Using it too early gives a harsher, less rounded sauce.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, 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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