My beloved mint sauce seems to no longer be available. The Cross & Blackwell site says none of their preferred vendors sell it. I just checked a dozen grocery sites and Amazon, and they all say it is unavailable.
Oh, and google says
" The Crosse & Blackwell brand for North America was discontinued by J.M. Smucker in December, 2022 ."
It’s more sour, less sweet, and has a mellower mint flavor than other mint condiments I’ve tried. Mint jelly is far too sweet for my tastes, and the flavor is too sharp,
The ingredients are:
malt vinegar
sugar
water
distilled vinegar
egyptian mint leaves
Any suggestions for a replacement? Home recipes I can attempt? Anyone know what locally available mints are most like “Egyptian Mint”?
I’m married to a British expat. Packages are constantly arriving from the site below. We have Mrs. Darlington’s mint sauce in the fridge but I don’t use it enough to have a preference.
They do have several. But they don’t seem to show the ingredients. And they all cost twice as much as on Amazon??? And they keep pushing some sponsored hot sauce when I search for mint sauce.
Mint grows like a weed. Plant a small selection and try making your own.
Strip the leaves off the stalks and chop them up finely. Alternatively (and this is how I do it) put them in a blender with a helping of malt vinegar and half a teaspoon of sugar. Then whizz it all up and leave for the froth to settle.
The reason I ask is that, growing up, my mom would always have a half-full jar of mint jelly in the fridge. “That’s just for lamb chops.” “Ummm, mom, so you don’t like it enough to eat it on anything else?”
“Oh, heavens no, it’s not good on anything else.” If you don’t especially like it, why do you like it on lamb?"
“Well, that’s just how lamb is supposed to be served…”
.
I never did get a real answer, and it was my introduction to Vague Societal Rules (and my family’s willingness to follow them unquestioningly).
I use it on pretty much any roast dinner style meal. Anything that ends up with a side serving of garden vegetables and gravy. Roast Chicken, Xmas turket dinners, roast beef, toad-in-the-hole, shepherds pie etc etc.
I mostly do use it on lamb. I eat cranberry jelly with poultry for similar reasons. We eat a lot of lamb, though, so we go through a decent amount of mint sauce. (I also serve apple sauce with pork, but we rarely have pork.)
Hmm, it might be good with duck, now that i think of it.
I have mint. It’s a weed. Two or three times a year i pull most of it up. The mint that grows in my yard probably used to be peppermint, but isn’t really, now. It actually might make a decent mint sauce. I should get some make vinegar and try.
The mint sauce I was brought up on used spearmint rather than peppermint, but à chacun son goût. It’s a known garden thug, so grow it in a pot, but, yes, it’s easy to make your own - it was one of the earliest kitchen things my mother taught me.
Where the association with lamb came from, I don’t know, the sweet/sharp/sour flavour works best against its fattiness, so could be good with other fatty meats. Or whatever is to your taste.
British Corner Shop does list the ingredients of the various mint sauces (although I don’t like that product and can’t recommend any brand, I have ordered from the company).
Interested to hear your opinion. I went on a search for C&B mint sauce late last year for my father. He has been using it on his lamb chops/roasts for decades and was disappointed to no longer be able to buy it. While I was able to find some bottles on eBay, I didn’t buy them due to the extremely high price and the fact that they had no idea what the expiration date was for them.
Well, tonight we tried Coleman, Duerr’s, and Gilway. The Coleman is the mintiest of the three, but is distinctly spearmint. It’s not bad. Duerr’s is the one i saw referenced most on line as what Cross& Blackwell refugees were getting. I was disappointed that it had a surprisingly weak flavor considering it looks like it’s mostly chopped mint. And the consistently is gooier than I’d like. But it’s okay. The Gilway’s tastes odd. My husband described it as “too salty”, which i kinda agree with.
All of them might benefit from being thinned with malt vinegar, but i don’t have that. I guess that’s next on my list.
None is totally satisfying, but either the Coleman’s or the Duerr’s might be okay.
And they all cost twice as much as on Amazon??? And they keep pushing some sponsored hot sauce when I search for mint sauce.