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Sauce

Mint Sauce

A condiment made from fresh spearmint leaves, sugar, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spearmint and mint share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mint Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mint

  1. Strip the leaves from the fresh spearmint stems.

  2. Wash and dry the leaves on a cloth.

  3. Chop the leaves very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped mint, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Gradually pour in the vinegar while mixing thoroughly.

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. Spearmint + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

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

  3. Spearmint + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Spearmint leaves
Provide the main aroma and flavor of the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and sharpness.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the vinegar while mixing thoroughly. Adding vinegar slowly while mixing lets the sugar dissolve and spreads the acid evenly, so the sauce tastes balanced rather than sharp in spots.

Swap the spearmint

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

  1. Peppermintfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Spearmintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mint, sugar, pepper, 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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