Greetings again! This is Tammy Proctor, back with another spicy tale for Eating the Past. As I
mentioned last week, 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.
Last week I discussed the first of these sauces, so if you missed it, go to UPR’s website and give it a
listen. Today, I wanted to talk about the dreaded brown sauce known as A-1. I’m pretty sure you either
love it or hate it, but for me, one taste of this transports me to my youth. We usually ate it on top of
burgers or steaks.
I did a little research into the history of A-1, which I think of as both quintessentially American and as a
steak sauce. It turns out I was wrong on both counts. The original A-1 sauce was born in England in the
1820s, and although the story sounds a bit far-fetched to me, it does make for a good origin tale.
Apparently King George IV’s personal chef, Henderson William Brand, created a tangy brown sauce at
the monarch’s request – it added something to a number of different dishes, including fish, soup, and
Welsh rarebit (listen to last week’s episode for more on this!).
This “brown sauce”, as it is still largely known in the United Kingdom, became the basis for A-1. The label
A-1 was used in Britain in the nineteenth century, but the sauce was patented and sold in the US
beginning in the 20th century. The version I enjoyed as a child was probably sold by R. J. Reynolds
(yes, the tobacco company) before it merged with Nabisco in the 1980s. Now, A-1 is a product of the
Kraft-Heinz company. You could write the history of food and corporate mergers with this one product!
What’s in it? According to the official Kraft-Heinz website, the ingredients are pretty simple: tomato
puree, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, raisin paste, crushed orange puree, spices (contains celery), dried garlic,
caramel color, dried onion, and xantham gum (a preservative).
This US A-1 differs in important ways from its UK cousin, HP Sauce, which is also produced by Kraft-Heinz.
That brown sauce contains: Tomatoes, Malt Vinegar, Molasses, Glucose-Fructose Syrup, Spirit Vinegar, Sugar,
Dates, Modified Cornflour, rye Flour, Salt, Spices, Flavourings, Tamarind.
The differences have a lot to do with the rules surrounding food in each country and the reliance (or not)
on corn syrup. Note that HP Sauce does not use a preservative like Xantham Gum or an artificial color like
Caramel. You’d have to do a side-by-side taste test to really understand the flavor profile differences, but I
can assure you that they do not taste the same.
So back to A-1 sauce. I’m a pescatarian now, so I no longer grill up a steak with A-1 on top. Kraft-
Heinz, however, wants me to try A-1 on other things. It’s new marketing tagline is “For Almost
Everything. Almost”. So grab a bottle!
For more spicy episodes, check out Eating the Past on Sunday at noon before the Splendid Table on your
UPR station.
