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Mint Sauce

A chilled sauce made from mint, sugar, vinegar, water, salt, and pepper, served with roast lamb.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,372 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mint

  1. Remove the leaves and tips from the coarser parts of the mint stalks.

  2. Chop the mint finely.

Steep and cool

  1. Place the chopped mint in a bowl and pour the boiling water over it, adding the sugar.

  2. Cover the bowl and let it sit until cool, about 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the vinegar, pepper, and salt to the cooled mixture.

  2. Serve very cold with roast lamb.

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 + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mint + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Mint
Provides the fresh, aromatic herbal flavour that defines the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tangy bite.

The step that matters

Let the mint cool before adding the vinegar. Boiling water softens the mint and draws out its flavour during steeping. Letting the mixture cool before adding the vinegar helps the sauce keep a fresh, bright taste rather than a heated, cooked one.

Swap the mint

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

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

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