It’s an almost world-class error to volunteer the dessert for a meal with friends, when your only talent for dessert is the eating of it and you have $20 in your bank account until the next payday.

Still, that was the unenviable position I found myself in recently. Blaming Donald Trump and his ridiculous wars for my lack of disposable income, I made my way to the supermarket, hoping there would be grapes and berries aplenty to make a fruit plate.

And then I saw the box on the special buys shelf.

Plastic gleaming in the bright supermarket lighting, forest green boxes somehow whispering: “I’m what you need for your dinner party … I’m what everyone needs for every dinner party … I bring the dinner party … I am the dinner party.”

The box was filled with what Australians have been calling “after-dinner mints” since Red Tulip chocolates launched the After Dinner Mint in 1965, its … ahem … “tribute” to the UK’s Rowntree After Eights which had been a confectionery revolution when it hit the shelves in 1962 (after the Michelangelo of chocolatiers, Yorkshireman Brian Sollitt, discovered how to keep the mint fondant from leaking out of the chocolate casing).

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If you grew up between 1965 and 2000, and your parents had other parents over for dinner, you knew the night was ending when the after-dinner mints were served on a tray beside a few cups of instant coffee, a small jug of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes.

An after-dinner mint was to be savoured, not scoffed. An after-dinner mint was consumed delicately. An after-dinner mint was an elegant end to the evening – removed from its snug black envelope like a refreshing little present for your mouth.

If any after-dinner mints were left when the other adults had taken their leave, they were packed back into the box and returned to the china or liquor cabinet.

The only time an after-dinner mint would be eaten in daylight was if you managed to unlock your parents’ china or liquor cabinet and sneak one while they were still at work.

Back to the task at hand, my budget dessert: I secured the supermarket’s after-dinner mints for under $5 and made them the “hero” of a fruit plate.

Upon arriving at the dinner, I gingerly placed the bowl (wrapped in foil, the view of the arrangement obscured) in the kitchen and set about being an amiable guest. Olives, cheese, chicken, salad and rice were all consumed happily, the night was wearing on and it was time for dessert.

Removing the foil from the bowl, I placed my offering on the table.

“Are those after-dinner mints?!”

A collective sigh went around the table. The black, chocolate-filled envelopes were picked up and examined as if they were ancient artefacts.

Suddenly we were all children again at this multigenerational dinner.

We marvelled at the vanished pleasure of opening a chocolate with a paper wrapper, how special it felt under our fingers. We remembered the special feeling of being offered an after-dinner mint before bed.

We also realised that the tradition of the after-dinner mint was in the room because those chocolates had been placed in a bowl and surrounded by fruit: it was the elegant end to our night together.

But instead of packing them back into the green box and popping it into the cupboard for the next dinner (who has a china or liquor cabinet now?), we stuffed them into our pockets and headed out into the night – a little chocolate in a black envelope connecting us back to our childhoods, our parents, our grandparents and all those around them who ended a night together with an after-dinner mint.

• Melanie Tait is a playwright and journalist living in Sydney