The label on a bottle of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce lists vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind extract, onions and garlic as key ingredients but the true secret is hidden under the guise of “spices” and “flavouring”. For 170 years, the specific contents of the popular sauce has been a closely guarded secret. That is until now.
A former employee of Lea & Perrins Brian Keogh, found a valuable treasure in a trash bin outside the sauce company - neatly written notes dating from the mid 19th century, in two leather-bound folios, detailing the original Worcestershire Sauce recipe. When Keogh died three years ago, his daughter came across the notes amongst his possessions and is now working with the Worcester Museum to have the notebooks displayed.
According to these notes, the tangy flavour could also come from cloves, soy sauce, lemons, pickles and peppers. The way the sauce is mixed and made however, remains unknown as do the quantities the noted recipe was intended to make.
Whatever the exact ingredients, ratios, or blending methods the sauce was, and is, a rip-roaring success. In a 2007 poll, Worcestshire Sauce was named the number one British ingredient to have the greatest impact on the food industry. Even English chef and restauranteur Marco Pierre White says that the sauce is what enables his to create the ‘the most delicious sauce in the world to serve with beef’.
See what delicious delights you too can create with the supreme Worcestershire Sauce with the help of the The Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce Cookbook !
I remember feeling intensely sad the first time I heard the story about Elena Desserich - the five-year-old girl diagnosed with brain cancer who hid hundreds of little notes around the house for her parents, Brooke and Keith, to discover after she had died.
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