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Lamb, Sauce For
Mint sauce is usually served with lamb. To make it, strip the leaves from some fresh young mint, wash and dry them well, and chop them as finely as possible. Put them into a tureen, and cover them with powdered sugar to the proportion of a table-spoonful of sugar to one and a half of mint. Let these remain for half an hour, then pour over them three table-spoonfuls of vinegar. If after a trial this sauce is found to be too sweet, a less proportion of sugar can be used; but it has been very generally approved when prepared as above. The vinegar is sometimes strained from the mint-leaves before being sent to table. Time, a few minutes to prepare. Probable cost, 3d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward English mint sauce, and the proportions are the whole recipe. The only real decision is how much sugar you like against the vinegar.
- The proportions, read carefullyOne tablespoon of sugar to one and a half tablespoons of chopped mint, then three tablespoons of vinegar. That is a sweet sauce by modern taste; many modern versions use rather less sugar for the same quantity of mint, which is what the book's own escape clause invites.
- Powdered sugarIn this period "powdered sugar" means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Caster sugar is the direct equivalent; ordinary granulated works if you give it the full half hour to dissolve.
- The half-hour rest is the hingeSugar on the mint draws out moisture and juice before the vinegar goes in, so the sauce is not simply raw chopped mint floating in vinegar. The recipe is explicit about the half hour.
- Vinegar choiceMalt vinegar was a common British household vinegar and is still the traditional match for lamb. White wine vinegar or cider vinegar gives a milder sauce; distilled white vinegar is harsher than the original likely intends and may need diluting with a spoonful of water.
- Chop, do not blend"As finely as possible" with a knife on dry leaves. A food processor bruises mint and turns the sauce dark and muddy, and wet leaves dilute the vinegar, so dry them properly first.
- TureenSimply the small covered serving dish the sauce goes to table in. Any bowl does; use glass or ceramic rather than metal, since the vinegar will pick up a taint from reactive bare metal.
- StrainingThe optional strained version, which the recipe mentions, gives a clear sweet-sour mint vinegar rather than a chunky sauce. Left unstrained it is closer to what most people expect now.
- Yield and keepingEnough for three or four with a roast. It holds a day or two covered in the refrigerator, though the mint dulls in colour; make it the same day if appearance matters. The 3d. cost is a period price and no guide to anything now.
Mint with lamb is one of the fixed points of the English table, and the pairing is generally traced to the medieval and early modern habit of serving sharp, sweetened sauces with rich roast meat, where vinegar and green herbs cut the fat much as verjuice and sorrel once did. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the late nineteenth century the combination was so automatic that this entry does not argue for it at all: it opens "mint sauce is usually served with lamb" and moves straight to proportions. The inclusion of a probable cost in pence, here threepence, is characteristic of Cassell's, which was written for households running to a budget and expected the cook to be accountable for every dish. It is worth noting how confident the book is about its own sweetness, offering a trial and a reduction rather than a range, which tells you something about Victorian sugar consumption at a period when refined sugar had become cheap enough to use freely in a savoury condiment.