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Sauce

Mint Sauce

A simple sauce made by mixing powdered sugar and vinegar, then combining with chopped mint leaves.

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

  1. Add the powdered sugar to the vinegar and stir until dissolved.

  2. Pour the mixture over the chopped mint leaves.

  3. Let it stand for 30 minutes on the back of the stove to infuse.

  4. If the vinegar is very strong, dilute it with water.

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 leaves
Provide the main fresh herbal flavour of the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that balances sweetness and extracts flavour from the mint.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sharp vinegar and rounds out its sourness.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar in the vinegar. Sugar dissolves much more readily in warm or stirred liquid than in cold, undissolved grains. Stirring until clear ensures the sweetness is evenly distributed through the sauce rather than gritty or uneven.

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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