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Sauce

Mint Sauce

A sauce made from fresh mint, parsley, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,198 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the mint and parsley.

  2. Pick the leaves from the stalks and mince them very fine.

  3. Place the minced herbs in a sauceboat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the sugar and vinegar to the herbs and mix well.

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 + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  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

Fresh green mint
Provides the main aromatic flavour that defines the sauce.
Fresh parsley
Adds fresh, grassy aroma that balances the mint.
Moist sugar
Sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and brightens the herbs.

The step that matters

Mince the herbs very fine. Finely cut herbs release more of their aromatic oils and juices into the vinegar and sugar, so the flavour spreads evenly through the sauce. Coarse pieces taste weaker and can feel tough or stringy in the mouth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Peppermintfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mint, sugar, 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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