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Mint Sauce
Take fresh, young mint, strip leaves from stems, wash, drain on a sieve, or dry them on a cloth.;, chop very fine, put in a saucetureen, and to three heaped table-spoons mint add two of pounded sugar; let remain a few minutes well mixed together, and pour over it gradually six table-spoons of good vinegar. If members of the family like the flavor, but not the substance of the mint, the sauce may be strained after it has stood for two or three hours, pressing it well to extract all the flavor. It is better to make the sauce an hour or two before dinner, so that the vinegar may be impregnated with the mint. The addition of three or four table-spoons of the liquor from the boiling lamb is an improvement.
A straightforward uncooked mint sauce for lamb, and the proportions still work. The only real variables are the sharpness of the vinegar and how long you let it sit.
- Give it the resting timeThe hinge is the hour or two of standing. Freshly mixed, it tastes of raw vinegar with mint floating in it; after an hour the acid has drawn the oils out of the leaves and the sauce reads as one thing.
- Quantities and yieldThree heaped tablespoons chopped mint, two of sugar, six of vinegar: roughly two-thirds of a cup of mixture, less if you strain it. The book gives no yield, so treat any serving count as a guess.
- Pounded sugarThis is sugar crushed fine in a mortar, a stage between loaf sugar and modern caster sugar. Ordinary granulated sugar works; superfine dissolves faster in cold vinegar.
- Sauce-tureenA small covered serving bowl brought to the table. Any nonreactive bowl will do for mixing — glass or china rather than bare aluminium, since the vinegar sits in it for hours.
- "Good vinegar"The recipe does not say which kind. Cider vinegar was the common American household vinegar of the period; malt vinegar is the British default for this sauce. Modern bottled vinegars run about 5 percent acidity, so if yours tastes harsh, cut it with a spoonful of water rather than adding more sugar.
- The lamb liquorOnly useful if you have boiled the lamb, which the recipe clearly assumes some cooks did. A few spoons of defatted pan juices from a roast leg does the same job, rounding the acid; add it just before serving so the sauce is not left sitting warm.
- Drying the leavesWorth doing properly. Wet mint waters the sauce down and the leaves bruise rather than chop, going dark and slimy under the knife.
Mint with lamb is a long-established Anglo-American pairing, and by the later nineteenth century a sharp mint-and-vinegar sauce was a common accompaniment to spring lamb. The vinegar-and-sugar base points to a kitchen used to holding flavour with acid and sweetness. The concession to family members who want the flavour and not the substance is characteristic of the book's tone, which repeatedly assumes a cook feeding people with settled opinions. The pairing itself is often traced to mint's reputation as a digestive aid for rich meat, though that explanation is traditional rather than documented.