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Salad

Green Mint Sauce

A fresh herb sauce made from finely minced mint and parsley, sweetened with sugar and brightened with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,198 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Green Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Remove the leaves from the mint and parsley stalks and mince them very finely.

  2. Place the minced herbs in a sauceboat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the sugar and vinegar to the herbs 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. Mint + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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 sauce's main fresh, aromatic flavour.
Fresh parsley leaves
Adds a milder green flavour and extra fresh herb character.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the herbs and gives the sauce its tang.

The step that matters

Mince the herbs very finely. Fine mincing breaks the leaves into small pieces that spread evenly through the sauce and release more of their aromatic oils. Coarse pieces leave the sauce chewy and uneven, with a weaker herb flavour.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mint, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Peppermintfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mint, 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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