#mint sauce

[sarahs-delights]

Roast leg of lamb with homemade roast potatoes and mint sauce

[thatpollguy]

Do you like mint sauce?

I love it

I like it

It's okay I guess

I dislike it

I hate it

I've never tried it

I'm allergic/intolerant

Voting ended onNov 29, 2025

[everybody-loves-to-eat]

crispy chicken tikka bowls with mint sauce

[chuck-snowbug]

黒きのこさん付きの、新政／No.6三種飲み比べ（No.6 R-type 2021 21NR-06, No.6 S-type 2021 21NS-06 & No.6 X-type 2021 21NX-06）、 ”spice wala”のラフロール（自家栽培ミントのヨーグルトソースを上からかける）、オリーヴ。

Three Kinds of Aramasa/No.6(Japanese Sake) feat. Black Mushroom from Colorful Mushrooms, Raff Roll of “spice wala” Topped with Homegrown Mink & Yogurt Sauce & Olive - October 9, 2022.

Previous Post:

https://chuck-snowbug.tumblr.com/post/697667346142265344

[menubot]

In 1913, Roast Spring Lamb, Mint Sauce, Creamed New Potatoes and Peas for only $0.35 at Cortlandt http://menus.nypl.org/menus/35235

[mayadawn]

Minted Lamb Stew with Dumplings

Recipe by The Carpenter's Daughter

[the-things-i-put-in-my-mouth]

Chicken roast dinner in a Yorkshire pudding, colcannon mashed potatoes, mixed cabbage, mint sauce…..

[petermorwood]

My friend and I were talking about Asterix movies ať lunch and the Englishmen have Everything with Mint Sauce joke came up (idk how it's in french/english, but that's the Czech version). Anyways, we managed to google some mint sauce recipes, but they mostly say it's served with lamb, and that's it. So, I am turning to you, the local expert on food (and medieval weaponry :D) in this corner of tumblr. Can you tell us more about this weird meat dressing and how it's used? Please and thank you.

First thing is to remember that Asterix is a comedy, and an easy source of humour is to turn national traits up to 11. So the Ancient Britons stop fighting at 5 PM every day to drink hot water with a spot of milk in it (putting tea in the hot water comes later, thanks to Getafix the Druid). They also drink warm beer, drive on the wrong side of the road, have a long-standing plan for a tunnel to France Gaul, say things like “Jolly good show, what?” and to Obelix’s disgust eat their wild boar boiled, with mint sauce.

Oddly enough, the historical English preference was for roasting. In “Beef and Liberty”, Ben Rogers provides lots of period quotations from European travellers about England’s roast-centric cuisine being “simple, but hearty and good”. They were less complimentary about attempts at more elaborate cooking, but IMO a lot of that was just a return serve in the still-ongoing match of xenophobia tennis.

As for mint sauce...

...it looks like grass-clipping soup - an appearance shared with numerous other green sauces more common in Europe than the UK - but the unsubtle nose-stinging whiff of pickled toothpaste is all its own.

In Britain it’s almost the last survivor of historical herb-based sauces - coriander (cilantro), lovage, sorrel, parsley etc. - but most commercial mint sauces, based as they are on vinegar, are far harsher than originals which would have used verjuice, the juice of sour fruit like unripe grapes, green apples etc. This is available from various sources, and is well worth having in the cupboard.

Mixing a spoonful of modern mint sauce with yogurt, sour cream or even mayonnaise is a definite improvement; so is 1 spoonful of it with 3 of basil pesto; anything to reduce its minty, vinegary one-note aggression.

According to FoodsOfEngland.com, mint sauce is mentioned in 'The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy' by Hannah Glasse (1747), though without a recipe, which suggests the sauce was so familiar and easy to make that instructions weren’t needed. Oddly enough, both mentions are in connection with cooking and serving pork in the style of lamb. There’s also a recipe for making pork taste like venison - I’d have thought making it taste like wild boar would have been easier, but never mind.

These are scans from our Prospect Books facsimile copy:

Mint sauce for lamb is one of a group of this-for-that sauces which include apple sauce for pork, cranberry sauce for poultry or game, and parsley sauce for fish (here in Ireland it also goes with boiled bacon and ham), while mustard and horseradish, the traditional accompaniments for beef, aren’t really sauces when used alone. So what are they?

It’s easy to get into a tangle about what to call a thing from a jar which goes with meat: it’s not a gravy, so is it a sauce, a condiment, a relish, a preserve or a pickle? There should be one thing to name them all, one thing to find them, one thing to bring them all and in the pantry bind them...

Sorry, got a bit distracted.

“Tracklement” fits the bill. Though it sounds old, FoodsOfEngland suggests it 'appears to have been invented’ in 1954 by Dorothy Hartley for her book “Food in England”. However since it’s a social history as well as a collection of recipes, what it may have done was pin a dialect word down in print for the first time. 

In addition, William Tullberg, founder of “Tracklements”, which makes mustards, pickles, chutneys etc....

...said that ‘tracklement’ was what his Lincolnshire grandmother called accompaniments to meat; he was born in 1932, which suggests that Granny’s word goes back into at least the late 1800s.

 You pays yer money and you takes yer choice. :-D