Name: Mint Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons chopped mint; ½ cup vinegar; 2 saccharine tablets

Why it works: Mint and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mint Sauce

Ingredients

2 tablespoons chopped mint
½ cup vinegar
2 saccharine tablets

Directions

Dissolve the saccharine tablets in the vinegar.
Stir in the chopped mint.
Serve immediately.

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.

Mint + vinegartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,376 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, bright taste.
Saccharine tablets: Provide sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.

“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.