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Sauce

To Make Mint Sauce

A sauce made from fresh mint, sugar, and vinegar, served immediately.

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 ↓

To Make Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the mint and clean it.

  2. Pick the leaves from the stalks and mince them finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the minced mint in a sauce tureen and mix in the sugar.

  2. Five minutes before serving, add the vinegar and stir well.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately to prevent the mint from turning yellow.

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
Provides the fresh, herbal flavour and green colour that define the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Serve immediately after adding the vinegar. Acid gradually breaks down the chlorophyll in mint leaves, causing the bright green colour to fade to yellow or olive. Serving soon after the vinegar goes in keeps the sauce looking fresh.

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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