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Sauce

Mint Sauce

A simple sauce made from mint, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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

  1. Combine sugar and vinegar in a bowl.

  2. Remove leaves from mint stalks and chop them finely.

Make and rest

  1. Add chopped mint to sugar and vinegar mixture and stir until sugar is dissolved.

  2. Let sauce sit for 2 to 3 hours 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. 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. 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
Supplies the fresh, aromatic flavour that defines the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, tangy character.

The step that matters

Let the sauce sit for 2 to 3 hours. Resting gives the mint time to release its flavour into the sugar and vinegar, and lets the sugar fully dissolve, so the sauce tastes balanced rather than raw and sharp.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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