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Mint Sauce

A condiment made from mint leaves, powdered sugar, and malt vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar 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 ↓

Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mint

  1. Strip leaves from the stems of the mint and wash well.

  2. Chop the mint leaves very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the chopped mint with the powdered sugar.

  2. Gradually add the malt vinegar 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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + malttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

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

  4. Malt + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together365 recipes

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

  5. Mint + malttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mint
Provides the aromatic herb flavor that defines the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves readily into the vinegar, balancing its sharpness.
Malt vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, tangy character and liquid base.

The step that matters

Gradually add the malt vinegar. Adding the vinegar slowly while mixing lets the powdered sugar dissolve evenly instead of clumping, giving a smooth, uniformly sweet-sour sauce.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, malt, 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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