The Hessians are coming

Jan Griesel has to think for a moment about which seven herbs really belong in the Frankfurt Green Sauce. "Chives, parsley, cress, borage, chervil, burnet and sorrel," the owner of Griesel's Milchhof remembers. This green variety can be found in his green sauce ice cream and gives the quark preparation a wonderfully fresh flavour with a dash of lemon.

He came up with the idea of transforming the traditional Easter dish into an organic ice cream flavour in the run-up to Grüne Woche. "Green sauce, Grüne Woche - it's a perfect match," says the exhibitor. The milk for this comes from his own cows. They spend most of the year on pasture, feeding on fresh grass and home-grown fodder. Fully automatic milking technology powered by green electricity allows the animals to decide for themselves when they want to be milked. Calves grow up on their mothers' milk. You can taste so much animal welfare: Jan Griesel's green sauce ice cream has a rounded flavour.

Highly flavoured herbal enjoyment

GIN SIEBEN is also based on the seven herbs of green sauce, also known as "Grie Soß" in Frankfurt. The herbs are first infused with the alcohol in a vat. This process, known as maceration, transfers the herbal essences to the alcohol. In the next step, it is distilled with juniper in the same way as dry gin. The Henrich distillery attaches great importance to regionality. The herbs come from Riedhof Frankfurt. The base alcohol and water also come from the area surrounding the banking metropolis. The herbal flavour is particularly evident in the finish. With its 49% vol. alcohol, the gin can be enjoyed with tonic, for example.

Healthy lunch

But the original flavour of the green sauce is available in regional organic quality at the Zum Hesse Gadde restaurant in Hall 6.2. The herbs from Riedhof Frankfurt, which traditionally sells the ingredients in paper containers, are also used there. They are mixed with hard-boiled egg yolk, salt, pepper, mustard, oil and vinegar to make a mayonnaise. The green sauce unfolds its flavour with potatoes from Seefeldhof in the Wetterau and eggs from the chickens at Franzehof Mauswinkel.

Incidentally, the history of "Grie Soß" is not entirely clear. The Huguenots probably brought the recipe from France to Hesse. The oldest printed recipe dates back to 1860 and has been prepared and creatively developed by amateur chefs and restaurateurs ever since.