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Mint Vinegar

A vinegar infused with mint leaves, optionally flavored with mustard seed, horseradish, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mint Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mint

  1. Pick mint leaves from the stems, wash them, and dry between soft cloths.

  2. Pack the mint leaves in a glass jar or wide-mouthed bottle.

Infuse and strain

  1. Cover the leaves with vinegar, seal or cork the jar, and let it stand for three weeks.

  2. Strain the vinegar through a fine cloth into a clean bottle.

Make the mint sauce

  1. For a mint sauce, use 2 cups of mint leaves, let them remain in the vinegar, and add 1 tablespoon of mustard seed and a bit of horseradish.

  2. Add sugar to taste 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Mint + horseradishtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mint leaves
Provide the main mint flavor that infuses into the vinegar.
Vinegar
Extracts and carries the mint flavor while adding sharp acidity.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter note to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that complements the mint.

The step that matters

Drying the mint leaves before packing. Leaves that are still wet dilute the vinegar and can encourage spoilage during the long infusion, so drying them thoroughly helps keep the vinegar clear and stable.

“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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