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Dessert

Mint Sauce Jelly

A gelatinous mint sauce made with sugar, vinegar, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mint Sauce Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil sugar and white wine vinegar until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Add the bruised or chopped mint to the hot mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture over the soaked gelatine.

  4. Add salt to taste.

  5. When the mixture begins to thicken, stir in the fine chopped mint.

  6. Pour the mixture into a mold.

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. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

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

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

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

  3. White wine + minttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Vinegar + minttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + white winetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its body.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the flavour.
Mint
Provides the herbal aroma and flavour that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the fine chopped mint as the mixture begins to thicken. If added too early, the mint may lose its fresh flavour during heating, and if added too late the chopped pieces will not stay evenly distributed once the gelatine sets.

Swap the mint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, 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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