Mint Sauce
Mix one tablespoon of white sugar to a half teacup of good vinegar; add the mint and let it infuse for half an hour in a cool place before sending to the table. Serve with roast lamb or mutton.
A three-ingredient sauce whose proportions are the whole recipe, so the vagueness of the original measures is worth pinning down before you start.
- The teacupA teacup in American books of this period is not a fixed measure: it is variously reckoned anywhere from about 4 to 6 fl oz, so half a teacup is somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 cup. Treat it as a starting point and taste rather than a fixed figure.
- Mint, unmeasuredThe recipe never says how much. For 1/3 cup of vinegar, 3 to 4 tablespoons of mint leaves, stripped from the stems and chopped fine, gives a sauce that tastes of mint rather than of vinegar.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegars of the period varied in strength and were not standardised as modern 5 percent vinegar is, so the sharpness is unpredictable. If the sauce bites, cut it with a tablespoon or two of water, or dissolve the sugar in a little hot water first.
- SugarOne tablespoon in 1/3 cup of vinegar is a light hand; the sauce is meant to be sharp, not sweet. "White sugar" simply distinguishes it from the brown and unrefined sugars also in the pantry, and ordinary granulated is what is wanted.
- The half hour mattersThe infusion is the whole technique, and the recipe names half an hour in a cool place. Given much longer in vinegar the leaves will discolour and the flavour flattens, so make it while the meat rests.
- Cool place, not coldA larder or cool pantry was cooler than the kitchen but well above refrigerator temperature. Cold mutes both the vinegar and the mint aroma, so if you chill it, let the sauce come back to room temperature before it goes to the table.
- YieldAbout 1/3 cup, a small sauceboat's worth. It does not keep well; make it the day you want it.
Mint sauce with lamb is a firmly British pairing, generally traced to the practice of serving sharp, herb-cut vinegars with rich or strongly flavoured meat, and by the nineteenth century it was fixed in English cookery. Its appearance in a bride's cook book is telling: a book aimed at a new housekeeper carried the sauces she would be expected to produce without thinking. The recipe is brief, giving little beyond the proportions. Cold uncooked vinegar sauces of this kind also had the practical virtue of requiring no stove space at the moment the roast came out.