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Sauce

Hot Mint Sauce

A vinegar-based sauce with brown sugar, water, salt, and spearmint, boiled until reduced.

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

Hot Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the vinegar until it is reduced by half.

  2. Add the brown sugar, water, salt, and chopped spearmint.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boiling point and serve.

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. Vinegar + spearminttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + spearminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sauce and balances the sugar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a mellow depth that offsets the vinegar's sharpness.
Spearmint
Supplies the fresh, aromatic mint flavour that the sauce is built around.

The step that matters

Reducing the vinegar by half. Boiling concentrates the vinegar, so its sharpness softens and the flavour becomes more rounded. Reducing too little leaves the sauce harsh, while over-reducing can make it overly sour and thick once the sugar is added.

Swap the spearmint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Spearmintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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