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Mint Sauce, American Style

A vinaigrette-style sauce made with mint, wine vinegar, water, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,372 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mint Sauce, American Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mint

  1. Wash the mint leaves and dry them on a napkin.

  2. Chop the mint leaves finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the wine vinegar and water.

  2. Sweeten the mixture with light brown sugar to taste.

  3. Add the chopped mint, salt, and pepper, and mix well.

  4. Let the sauce sit for 15 minutes 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. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  2. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Mint + winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh mint leaves
Provide the main herbal aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, tangy bite.
Light brown sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness, rounding out the sharpness of the vinegar.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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