Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, made with vinegar, molasses, anchovies, and tamarind, is a popular condiment used to enhance the taste of meat and in Bloody Mary cocktails. It was first imported into the US in 1839 and is the oldest bottled condiment in the country. The recipe is a trade secret, but the ingredients include vinegar, molasses, anchovies, water, onions, salt, garlic, tamarind paste, cloves, and chili extract. The sauce is aged in wooden barrels for 18 months and is not suitable for vegetarians.
Worcestershire sauce – pronounced wust-ter-shire, woos-ter-sheer or woos-ter-sher – is a vinegar and molasses-based condiment used to enhance the taste of meat and add a touch of flavor to Bloody Mary cocktails. Although Worcestershire sauce is now the generic name for the popular condiment that also uses the Indian spice anchovies and tamarind, it is mostly widely associated with its first manufacturer, Lea & Perrins. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, named for the English county of its birth, was first imported into the United States (USA) in 1839 and is the oldest bottled condiment in the country – by contrast, Heinz launched its ketchup in 1876 .
The sweet, tangy, and salty taste of this sauce was inspired in the mid-1800s by Lord Sandys, a British nobleman who enjoyed the distinctive sauce he remembered from his travels in India. He asked Worcester chemists John Lea and William Perrins to attempt to duplicate the sauce, which combined vinegar, spices, fish and molasses. The resulting recipe was so smelly and unpalatable that the chemists bottled their broth and forgot it in the cellar. According to the company, Lea and Perrins stumbled upon the bottles a few years later and, to their surprise, the concoction was aged into a delicious sauce.
In 1837, Lea & Perrins bottled and sold their sauce throughout Europe. In 1839, John Duncan, a New York businessman, began importing the sauce into the United States. The bottles are still wrapped in paper which originally protected them from breakage during shipping and is now a symbol of the Lea & Perrins brand. Although the recipe for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce is a trade secret, the ingredients labeled on the bottle include vinegar, molasses, anchovies, water, onions, salt, garlic, tamarind paste, cloves and chilli extract. The sauce is aged in wooden barrels for 18 months.
Worcestershire sauce is used as a steak sauce and burger booster in the US, as a dipping sauce in Hong Kong, and as a flavor pop for the ultimate cheesy toast in the UK (UK). In 1921, Harry’s New York Bar in Paris squirted some sauce into a glass with vodka and tomato juice to create the first Bloody Mary. The sauce is gluten-free, but is not considered an appropriate sauce for vegetarians because it contains fish. The sauce doesn’t need to be refrigerated, although refrigeration helps it stay fresher longer.
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