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Mint Sauce (Rinse and dry one bunch)
Rinse and dry one bunch of fresh mint; chop it very fine and add three-quarters of a cupful of vinegar in which has been dissolved two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Let stand for an hour before serving.
A plain uncooked mint sauce of the English type, meant for roast lamb or mutton. The only real variable is the vinegar, which in 1900 was considerably milder than what most of us buy today.
- The vinegar is the hingeHousehold vinegar of the period was commonly weaker than today's, often reckoned at about 4 percent acidity, and cider or malt vinegar was widely used. Modern distilled white vinegar at 5 percent will taste harsh straight; malt or cider vinegar, or white wine vinegar cut with a spoonful of water, gives something closer to the intended result.
- One bunch of mintReckon on a supermarket bunch of about 1 oz, which yields roughly half a cup of leaves once stripped and around a third of a cup chopped fine. Spearmint is the traditional choice; peppermint is too aggressive.
- Chop, do not bruiseA sharp knife and a few decisive passes. Mint blackens and turns bitter when hacked at with a dull blade, and a food processor will reduce it to a dark paste.
- Dissolve the sugar firstTwo tablespoons takes some patient stirring to go into cold vinegar. If it is slow, warm a few tablespoons of the vinegar, stir the sugar into that, then add the rest cold so the mint is never heated.
- The standing hour mattersThe rest is what turns chopped leaves and sharp vinegar into a sauce; the mint softens and gives up its oils. It is best made an hour or two ahead and used the same day, as the colour dulls overnight.
- YieldAbout three-quarters of a cup, enough for six to eight servings alongside a roast. It was usually offered as a condiment for sliced meat rather than poured over the joint, though the recipe says nothing about service.
Vinegar-and-sugar mint sauce is the standard English accompaniment to roast lamb and mutton, and by the late nineteenth century it is a common entry in American general cookbooks as the expected partner to those meats. The pairing is often traced to the medieval and early modern habit of serving sharp, sweet-sour green sauces with roast meat, where acidity cut the fat of animals slaughtered older and richer than today's lamb. That it requires no cooking, no stock and no thickening made it a reliable entry for a household book aimed at cooks working without much equipment.