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Mint Sauce
1 tablespoon powdered sugar 1/2 cup vinegar 1/4 cup finely chopped mint leaves Dissolve sugar in vinegar. Pour this over finely chopped mint leaves and stand for one-half hour on back of a stove to infuse. If vinegar is very strong, dilute with water.
A classic English mint sauce for lamb, no cooking required beyond gentle warming. It keeps in the refrigerator for a week or two and improves after the first day.
- The hinge: do not boil"Stand on back of a stove to infuse" means low, steady warmth, not simmering. Mint turns dull olive and loses its volatile oils if the vinegar gets hot; the lowest burner setting off the heat, or a bowl set in hot water for 30 minutes, is right.
- Vinegar strengthThe instruction to dilute is not optional advice for the timid. Household vinegars of the period varied considerably in strength and were not standardised. Standard supermarket white or cider vinegar today is 5 percent, and mint sauce made with it straight is sharp but workable; taste and cut with a tablespoon or two of water if it stings.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period the term generally meant sugar ground finer than granulated, so it would dissolve without heat; modern confectioners' or caster sugar stands in. Granulated sugar works if you stir until no grit remains at the bottom.
- Chopping the mintChop with a sharp knife rather than grinding in a processor, which bruises the leaves and gives a muddy, grassy sauce. Spearmint is the traditional choice; peppermint is too medicinal here.
- YieldAbout two-thirds of a cup. At roughly a tablespoon per plate, that serves eight or more.
- ConsistencyThis is a thin, pourable sauce, not the thick jelly sold in jars. If you want it to cling, increase the mint rather than adding starch.