Greetings all! This is Tammy Proctor, back with another spicy tale for Eating the Past. I have been
giving some thought lately to the spices and flavors that are hard to categorize and yet easily identified
with one taste.
Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, we kept two brownish sauces in our staples
cupboard, and they were used as ingredients in other dishes or as toppings for beef. These two sauces are
alike in purpose but their histories and flavors are quite different.
Today I will talk about the first of these sauces, and in a future episode I will discuss the second. So the
first sauce is Worcestershire Sauce, that hard-to-pronounce and mysterious elixir. It’s hard to imagine a
Bloody Mary or certain soups without it, and growing up, I often had it on top of burgers or steaks.
Where did this sauce originate? The recipe is a bit murky and secret, but we do know that it probably
originated in the English town of Worcester as the brainchild of John Wheeley Lea and William Henry
Perrins.
In the 1820s they ran a chemist shop—which in US English is kind of like a pharmacy or
general store. You could get medicines but also other necessities for house and person – soap, certain
foods, household items, etc. These men – Lea and Perrins – manufactured and sold the first commercial
version of the sauce in the 1830s. I’ve got a bottle of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce in my
cabinet today, even though now lots of others make the sauce.
What is it exactly? Here’s where it gets interesting. The official ingredient on my Lea & Perrins bottle
are as follows: vinegar, molasses, sugar, water, salt, onions, anchovies, garlic, cloves, tamarind extract,
natural flavorings (whatever those are), chili pepper extract.
This is a pretty straightforward list of ingredients, but what is less well known are the quantities of each.
Also, the sauce requires fermentation for its distinctive taste. The histories of the company maintain that
the sauce was accidentally created when a customer brought in a sauce and asked the two chemists to replicate
it. They thought it tasted awful, so they put it in the basement. There it fermented, creating what we know as
Worcestershire Sauce.
It isn’t clear how much of that is true, but it is true that fermentation gives the sauce its taste. If
you want to make your own, there are lots of recipes on the web, but these are usually not
fermented/aged as the original sauce is.
What to make with this sauce? I recommend trying Welsh rarebit. You can make it with milk, but I like
the version in The Joy of Cooking made with beer. It is super easy – 1 lb grated cheese (sharp cheddar is
good), 1 T butter, 1 cup beer (dark beer is best). Mix butter and beer and heat until warm, then add
grated cheese. Once that is melted, add 1 egg, 1 t Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to taste, and ¼ t
of prepared mustard. Pour the cheese mixture over crusty toasted bread. You can just eat it at that point
or stick it under the broiler and brown it a bit. Yum!
For my discussion of the second sauce, join us next week on Eating the Past, just before the Splendid
Table at noon on your UPR station.
