The Strange Story of Worcestershire Sauce
It’s one of the most recognisable sauces in the world - but the story behind Worcestershire sauce is anything but ordinary!
In the 1830s, two chemists and druggists, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, were running a chemist business on Broad Street in Worcester, England.
According to the traditional Lea & Perrins story, a nobleman from Worcestershire gave the chemists a recipe for a piquant sauce he had encountered in India and asked them to recreate it.
They produced a batch - but when they tasted it…
It was apparently awful!
The mixture was put aside in the cellar and forgotten.
According to the famous story, when the chemists eventually rediscovered the sauce, it had matured and fermented. They tasted it again and were surprised to find that the harsh flavour had mellowed into something much more appealing.
That supposedly unsuccessful experiment became Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce, which was being sold commercially by 1837.
BUT THERE'S A MYSTERY…
The story sounds great - but historians have discovered some serious problems with it.
The nobleman is often identified as Lord Sandys, but there is no good evidence that he was responsible for the recipe. Historical research has found that the Sandys traditionally associated with the story was not a Governor of Bengal, and available records do not establish that he travelled to India as claimed.
So where did the recipe really come from?
We don't know for certain.
Even the famous story of the terrible-tasting sauce being abandoned in the cellar may be partly company folklore created to explain the sauce's unusual origins.
What we do know is that Lea & Perrins successfully commercialised the sauce in the 1830s, and it soon began travelling around the world.
WHEN DID WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE REACH AUSTRALIA?
Very early!
A fascinating early Australian reference appeared in the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser on 19 September 1846.
An advertisement by C. V. Earle offered Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce for sale at the Medical Chemical Repository opposite the Angel Inn in West Maitland, New South Wales.
There were other early references in Australasia around the same time, demonstrating that Lea & Perrins sauce was already reaching this part of the world less than ten years after its commercial introduction in Britain.
And eventually, Worcestershire sauce became a familiar ingredient in Australian kitchens - splashed over steaks, sausages, mince, pies, stews and countless other dishes.
From a mysterious 19th-century recipe to a sauce found in kitchens around the world, its journey is quite remarkable.
And perhaps the strangest part of all?
A sauce that was supposedly too horrible to eat became one of the world's most famous condiments!
Bottle Images: 1890s bottle vs 2020s bottle - Old advertisements public domain ca.1875-1885
