Mint Sauce

Mint Sauce

This is the kind of sauce I grew up with, the recipe probably from Aunt Daisy, the doyen of New Zealand's radio waves when my mother learnt how to cook. When I was young, lamb was a stable part of the diet with roast lamb (or hogget or mutton) every Sunday. This, of course, meant various ways of dishing up left over meat for the rest of the week, including cold sliced meat, curry, cornish pasties, shepherds pie and soup made from the bones.

Best thing about the roast lamb was the mint sauce. It would have been the one that every household made and it eventually made its way into the Edmonds Cookbook (which began as a giveaway in 1890 and is still going).

Here's the recipe: Put into a jug 3 or 4 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh mint leaves (we had a special roller/cutter thing to do this) and cover with boiling water. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar and about 1/2 cup of malt vinegar. Add salt to taste.

There are variations of the recipe these days with all sorts of additions. I stick to the basics although I not usually add salt and while malt vinegar was the stable vinegar when I was given the task of making this sauce as a child, there are all sorts of vinegars to choose from now. As mentioned elsewhere, it also makes a good marinade for lamb chops, lamb backstraps, lamb steaks and so on.

Cheers,
Sue

Sue, this is a very thin sauce, right?

When I think "mint jelly" with lamb, I think of a sort of glutinous sweet mass with so much sweetness that the mint can hardly show through. I usually taste a bit, and avoid it for the rest of the meal.

Do you serve the mint sauce on the side or poured over the meat from the get go. [I'm trying to remember the sauce from the lamb you roasted for us several years ago ... and not having any success, although both Janet and I remember how delicious the lamb itself was.]

Regards, Bob

Hi Bob,
This is a thin runny sauce and it's quite a brownish green as mint leaves steeped in boiling water loose their colour. It is served in a jug and people pour as much or as little as they like over their meat on the plate.

I discovered the manufactured sweet, gelatinous mint jelly quite late in the piece and I always thought it was an American invention, but Jenise tells me it definitely is not. The thing is, mint jelly in jars only started appearing here, to my knowledge, when we started to become influenced by things from America. But it probably was actually something to do with our borders being opened up for imports, so of course it could have been from Australia, or even from the 'mother country'.

If I served you lamb, then it would have been rack of lamb and the sauce was probably a minted pea puree.

Cheers,
Sue

You roasted a whole lamb, Sue, or maybe it was a joint effort with others. You used an interesting metal cooker I haven't seen anywhere since.

There may have been sauce on the table, but there were so many good things and so many interesting people around, I missed the sauce.

That mint jelly is what I grew up with in Wisconsin. Don't know the history of the stuff, but it never occurred to me until recently that a thin mint sauce would work well.

You roasted a whole lamb, Sue, or maybe it was a joint effort with others. You used an interesting metal cooker I haven't seen anywhere since.

There may have been sauce on the table, but there were so many good things and so many interesting people around, I missed the sauce.

That mint jelly is what I grew up with in Wisconsin. Don't know the history of the stuff, but it never occurred to me until recently that a thin mint sauce would work well.

Oh, I remember now. It was a whole lamb on the spit! One of our own lambs. And yes, that was mint sauce served on the side.

This is the good stuff, nothing like that abomination, mint jelly.

Three cheers for real mint sauce!

-Paul W.