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Sauce

Superior Mint Sauce, to Serve with Lamb

A simple mint sauce made with fresh mint, vinegar, sugar, and sea salt, served with lamb.

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

Superior Mint Sauce, to Serve with Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the chopped mint leaves, white vinegar, sugar, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Stir until the sugar dissolves completely.

  3. Let the mixture sit for at least 30 minutes to allow the flavors to meld.

Serve

  1. Serve with lamb.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 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

Fresh mint leaves
Provides the main herbal flavor and fresh aroma of the sauce.
White vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, tangy bite.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness and helps dissolve into the liquid.

The step that matters

Let the mixture sit. Resting allows the mint's flavor to infuse into the vinegar and sugar, so the sauce tastes more rounded. Serving it too soon gives a sharper, less blended taste.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar. 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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