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Sauce

Mint Sauce

A sharp, herbaceous sauce made from finely chopped mint, sugar, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Prepare the mint

  1. Strip mint leaves from stems and wash carefully.

  2. Chop the mint leaves very fine.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Slowly add the vinegar while rubbing the mixture together.

  3. Prepare the sauce some time before using to allow the flavor to develop.

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. Spearmint + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Spearmint + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Spearmint leaves
Provide the fresh, aromatic mint flavor that defines the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and sharpness.

The step that matters

Slowly add the vinegar while rubbing the mixture together. Adding the vinegar slowly and rubbing the mint and sugar together helps the sugar dissolve into the liquid instead of sitting grainy. Evenly moistened mint also releases its oils and flavor more uniformly.

Swap the spearmint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Spearmintthe 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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