Mint Sauce
Dissolve one tablespoon of powdered sugar in one-half cup of vinegar. Pour this over one-fourth cup of finely chopped mint leaves and stand for one-half hour on back of stove to infuse. If vinegar is very strong, dilute with water.
A four-line recipe with one real variable: the strength of the vinegar. Everything else is chopping and waiting.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period ranged widely; modern distilled white vinegar is a standardised 5 percent acetic acid, which is on the sharp side for this. Cider vinegar or a white wine vinegar diluted with a tablespoon or two of water gives a sauce you can spoon rather than sip cautiously.
- Powdered sugarHere this means finely ground sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Granulated sugar dissolves perfectly well in vinegar if you stir it a moment, and avoids the faint chalkiness cornstarch adds.
- "Back of the stove"On a coal range this was the cool zone: warm enough to draw out flavour, never hot enough to cook. Set the bowl somewhere barely warm, or simply leave it at room temperature for the half hour. Heating mint in acid past lukewarm turns the leaves drab olive and dulls the flavour.
- Chop, don't bruiseA quarter cup of chopped leaves comes from roughly a bunch of spearmint, depending on leaf size. Use a sharp knife and few strokes; mint pounded or minced to paste darkens at the cut edges.
- Consistency and adjustmentThis is a thin, loose sauce meant to be spooned over lamb, not a jelly. Taste after infusing and add sugar or water a little at a time; the balance shifts as the mint gives up its oils.
- Yield and keepingMakes roughly three-quarters of a cup, more if diluted. Best the day it is made, though the acid keeps it safe in the refrigerator for several days as the colour fades.
Mint sauce with lamb or mutton is an English fixture, generally traced to the long tradition of serving sharp, sweetened vinegar preparations with rich meat, a habit that runs back through medieval sauces built on verjuice and vinegar rather than the fat-based sauces of later French cooking. That an American cookbook issued by a pattern company in the early twentieth century includes it says something about how thoroughly the English roast-and-sauce repertoire had settled into middle-class American kitchens. Nothing about the method requires equipment or skill, which is exactly why it belongs in a book of this kind.