April 16, 2024 • 42 mins
It's tangy. It's salty. It's sweet. It's unctuous... but what exactly is Worcestershire sauce? Join Ben, Noel and Max on their continuing condiment journey as they explore the bizarre origin story of one of the world's most famous (and, arguably, strangest) sauces in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give a big thank you to
our super producer, mister Max Williams. Keep them all in check,
shut up buster rhymes.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Uh you say, I got to something on the something
and the something on your neck?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, I've heard For years I thought I heard that song.
You guys know I love hip hop, And for years
I thought he was saying, I've got the eggnog beep
that makes you sweat your neck. Who ha, I've got
you all in check. And I was like, man, New
York slaying is crazy. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I thought, Also, it means that that's actually quite good.
I beat like eggnog, make that.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Pretty good?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Them eggs to get that nog sounds so absolutely dirty,
like we're going to get flagged in our internal.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We only use whole eggs. Okay, last it has nothing
to do with today's episode, but uh, you guys, true story.
For a long time as well, I thought he was
saying I got you all in check like the country
of Chechia, like c z e h and I'm of.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
You in my mind in check at all times.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
What is like, Okay, Buster, if you're listening, Man, we're
big fans. I've been bullying with me as always is
the one and only the man, myth legend, mister Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
No you think you want Buster on the show? Oh man,
he's that's a big dude right there. Man, Man, he
got he got, he got swollen. He was always kind
of swollen, but he seems to have gotten swoller late
in life.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Over a time. Yeah. And uh and gosh, you can't
you can't mess with the rhymes. Uh. He's got a
sort of secret sauce. We could say segue. Uh, Noel,
you are on the road and Uh, I hope if
I had a little horse.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It's because it's early for me and my brain because
I've been on the West Coast long enough where i
have finally just finally adapted to West Coast brain, only
to have to adapt back to East Coast brain immediately.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah. We were we were talking off air, and I
was I always saying like, oh man, I've been there.
The time zones are weird. Uh, but we have uh,
we have a continuing mission which is to explore ridiculous
history and we want to start today's episode with a
big thanks to a good friend of of ours, mister
(03:00):
Brenton Smith from Station sixteen.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Of course, Brenton, by the way, a missive Dare we
say a mandate? Dare we say it is our charge
to explore ridiculous history?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yes? Yeah, check this out, Noel, So you and I
know Brenton, I would say pretty well at this point,
I was astonished to find that he actually listens to
the show Ridiculous time.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Every time I hear that anyone listens to the show,
I'm astonished, right.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Despite the fact that he has to hang out with
us on a regular basis in person as we make
a bunch of weird sketch comedy and other.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Videos, sometimes with you wigged out and costumed out as
George Washington traveling through time.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Hey, and you as the you, as the person who
introduces that poor guy to things like virtual reality or escalators.
I'm the straight man.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's this catch, but it's fine if you haven't seen those.
By the way, check out the stuff they don't want
you to know social media channels of note, and you
can see them.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
It's basically become an ongoing series.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
But Brenton fine, fond of Fine Whiskey's ball caps and
apparently sauce history. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, so he asked us. He said, you guys, you know,
I listened to the show, and also I like what
you're doing with these condiments. But why have you never
talked about Worcestershire. Worcestershire.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
See, that's going to become an ongoing thing. I mean,
there's just so many ways to make a meal out
of that. Sometimes I like to go wor You we go, Yeah,
Sometimes I like to shorten it to Wooster because we
know how that goes. What is it, though, Ben? What
is this brown juice of the Gods?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Hang on, I'm writing down the number of times that
we're saying this name. Okay, so we're already at like
four or five. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So most of us
who enjoy cooking will use this sauce Worces this year,
and we often, at least here in the US and
(05:15):
probably in England, we often buy it in a grocery
store with like a paper wrapping around it. The Lee
in Parents bottle. Yeah you remember those?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
You know It's true, Ben, And I've got to say,
in my mind, Lee and Parents is the only one
that exists, though I know there are other pretenders to
the throne.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And it's a very interesting throne indeed, because we're most
all of us are familiar with the sauce, know it
and love it. But if we just straight up describe
the ingredients and the flavor, it would make even the
most articulate person sound absolutely bonkers. Luckily we are not
the most articulate people. Well we're articulately bonkers at least.
(05:56):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, it is a weird one, right, because there's nothing
else quite like it. It has some soy sauce vibes,
you know, it has some if you ever had like
liquid aminos, you know, something like that, or even what's
the other one MSG kind of vibes. But yet none
of those things and all of those things. It's it's
sort of a mystical brown liquid. Yeah, it's still not
(06:20):
quite all all the stuff we described as like part
of Worcestershire, but not quite the thing entire. So look,
we will throughout this episode use alternate pronunciations. You might
hear worcestershre Worcestershire or what'd you say worcesters Shire. I
(06:43):
liked Worcestershire, which I know is wrong. It's just fun
to say. It makes me feel like I'm tasting it
as I say it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, I like that. I like that form and function,
just like morocket taut us. You know, folks, if you
think the pronunciation is ridiculous, just wait till you hear
the origin story. Before we get to that, though, we
got to break down the flavor. Man, how would you
describe wors the shure sauce?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, I was, I was kind of beginning to because
I was trying to think of it. It's sort of
like a state of mind more than it even is
like a specifical flavor, right Florida.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Because I mean it has it's the tang and the
salts of something that we might recognize as like a
soy sauce, but then it has the it reveals these
other almost sweet and sour, a tiny bit of subtle
kind of floral notes or something. It really is just
it tas what does it taste like?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It tastes like, Yeah, there's a there's a central brightness respectively.
It's that floral bit that I was trying to Yeah,
I mean, there are layers to it. And with so
much going on palette wise, it's kind of surprising that
we would put it in so many different dishes. I mean,
we use it all the time.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Can we just start off off the rip saying that,
I think we're all pretty big fans of the stuff.
This is not the time where we rag on Wooster
higher sauce as a flavor. More just kind of maybe
lampoon the history of it a little bit and kind
of bring some things into the light. But boy, there's
nothing like it. When that's what you want, there's nothing
else you can to reach for, whether it be a soup,
(08:22):
a braise, perhaps even a saute. Yeah, yeah, just so,
And we want to go to Aleah Hoyt. Writing for
How Stuff Works, she interviewed Seamus Mullet, chef at the
Institute of Culinary Education, and he has one of the
best descriptions of this. He says, Worcestershire sauce is kind
(08:44):
of a flavor amplifier, right. It makes things deeper, it
makes things more savory. It's like the hip kids call
it oomammy ooh mommy.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
You know it's true, and we love that.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
It really is sort of what do they that they
say that there's like acid, heat, salt, and then the zumammy.
It was just sort of like an additional you know,
taste sense almost the way things hit your palate.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It's mushrooms, you know. That's the thing about your sauce.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It really has a mushroomy kind of flavor to it
as well to me anyway. But yeah, I'm sorry, that's right.
It's the fifth taste, right, umammy.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
After salty, sweet, bitter, and sour, And I.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Said acid heat and all of that, but those are
kind of the chefy ways of describing those.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yeah, Often umami is described as deliciousness and Chef Mullen.
Chef Mullen argues that umami brings out natural flavorings in food,
so he says it makes steak taste more steak, like
mushrooms more mushroomy, you know. Oh. We also we've got
(09:54):
to give a shout out to our friends Annie Lord
and Andrew over it. Save. Yeah, they've got a cool
history of umami. It wasn't really a Western thing until
the early nineteen hundreds thanks to an astonishing chemist and
professor named Kikune Ikeda something to do with msg in
(10:16):
that tale, I believe, right, Yes, sir, you are correct. Yeah, yeah,
and he was. He isolated this isolated glutamate and created
monosodium glue toamate.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
M ST, which it's a bad rap. Weirdly, we talked
about this in our History of Chinese Restaurants. MSG sort
of got unfairly maligned in sort of a weird racist
kind of slander campaign against Chinese restaurants.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, and he noticed even back when it was popularizing this,
he said, Okay, what I'll call what I'll call umami,
it really is signaling. Glutamate is signaling the presence of protein,
and human beings evolved to hunt protein. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Even in the Shefe type shows, they refer to the
big old slab of you know, main course, you know
goodness on your plate as your protein, whether it be
you know, beast or tofu.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Mm hmm yeah, whether it be tofurky or ribs. I mean. Also,
we were interested to learn you can taste glue tomate
if you're a human at concentration six and sixteen times
lower than sugar or salt. That is interesting. What does
it taste like? Just a dash will do it? It
tastes delicious? Yeah, okay, this is deliciousness.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
We're still talking about here, Okay, got it. So, without
going too too far into the food science of it all,
if you want a deeper dive onto that kind of stuff,
definitely please do check out Savor. We ought to point
out that a lot of savory foods which might be
considered umami rich, they need time to steep in those
flavors you know, low, slow and low, you know, or
(12:00):
a nice braize in its own juices of like a
pork loin or whatever it might be. Those things have
to really kind of set in and that does take
time and care.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah. Speaking with MPR of Flavored chemist named Ariel Johnson said,
a lot of umami esque or omamy rich foods are
fermented or slow cooked, like you said, like a bone
broth or kimchi, and it can take weeks, right kim
I mean like for some of these things, right, Yeah,
(12:31):
you know, kimchi started by burying this stuff. So we'll
see why this point about age is important about fermentation
because we know there is ancient history. One of humanity's
oldest condiments is garam and it had umami before people
use the word of mommy, it's a fermented fish sauce,
(12:53):
a precursor to Catsup Yeah, which later became Ketchup Yeah.
And Worcestershire probably isn't a direct descendant of Garhm, but
the flavor profiles have a lot in common. Fish sauces
were a staple in East Asian cooking for millennia, basically a.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Staple in both of our fridges as well.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Ben Oh, yes, sir, Yeah, you gotta have you gotta
have your sauces. You know, it's funny. I didn't think
about this.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Maybe it's been a while since we did the episode
on Ketchup, But Worcestershire Sauce as we know it today
really really is kind of the next evolution of that
Garum that was considered to be the precursor to Ketchup.
But modern day Ketchup doesn't resemble either of these things
at all. But Worcester Sauce really is kind of that
thing that we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, it's carrying the torch. We don't know whether the
original Worcestershire bros. Were trying to copy an existing variation,
like if they had a sample of it. But our
story starts with three guys. There are two of them.
(14:03):
John Wheeley Lee spelled l Ea and William Henry parents,
this chemist holy In parents.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
They started a business in eighteen twenty three in we're okay,
would this be woolster?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I think it's a wooster. I think it's a wooster.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Oh, you know, it's one of those things where you've
got Leicester but it's spelled Leicester. We've talked about this
in England, so would not it follow logically that Worcester
would be woolster.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
It's english Man. There are no rules, really.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And why have the shire on a place that already
is the name of basically a shire. Why not just
call it Worcester Sauce or Worcester Sauce anyway, we'll probably
get to that, but guess that's where they were operating
out of a little pharmacy on the high Street, which
was Broad Street, and they made tons of stuff. They
were doing lots of experimentation, many of which were with flavor.
(15:02):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah. They also went on to make a hair regrowth
tonic spoiler that spoiler it doesn't work, but try it
and soup. I don't know what to tell you. They
also quite possibly create a fable about their own fabled sauce,
So maybe I love it fable fabled, yeah, meta fable.
So maybe we can we can share the origin story
(15:25):
as they put it, and we'll learn about the third
character in the tail.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I'm just gonna nip this in the butd real quick, guys,
and see what the Internet says as to how we
should pronounce the name of this sauce. Not you gonna
change the way I pronounce it necessarily, but I'm just curious.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Oh we've got some tangents on that too. Man.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Okay, well, I'm excited to get to that. But it
says here a shy see, I can't.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Even do it.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Woos to sure, woos to shure it's a wu it
really is wu ha.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Wu stuff uh. And then sure sure, So when you
get to the end of it, you're just saying, sure, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I like Wooster Wooster, Sure sure Shyre in there, but
sure Shire enough.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Huh. That was a transition right there.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They did, in fact, you know, dabble in sorcery, sorcery
and sorcery sort of what do you call it, ben,
when you when you transmute things into other things, alchemy,
flavor alchemy.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
There we go. I like that, I'm a flavor alchemist.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
H and they had, at least on the early versions
of this this fabled sauce a little bit of a tagline, right,
how did that read?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Oh? They put out an ad shortly after they began sauce. Yeah,
and it says, quote, the Worcestershire sauce is prepared by
us from the favorite recipe of a nobleman of acknowledged gout,
which back then was not a bad thing, having good
taste acknowledged good isn't. Don't you get gouts from eating
(17:02):
too many rich foods? Yes?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I love language, It's so fun.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Let's terrifying.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Too much poulted meat from all that good taste and
makes you have a foot swellow And this was likely
referring to the nobleman in question, Lord Marcus Sandy's of
the third Baron Sandy's, who had grown accustomed to kind
of a garam like fish sauce that he had learned
about and kind of gotten a taste for while governing
(17:29):
a brawl in Bengal. I can see a real colonizer,
this fella.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Right. Yeah, let's picture this moment with this story. So,
an aristocrat returns to England from abroad and colonial India,
and he just cannot find his favorite condiment. I just
can't find my favorite condiments right, And he doesn't have
any physical samples, probably because he likes the stuff so
much he already ate it all. So picture him, like
(17:55):
Rick Rubin in all these recording sessions, we can picture
the baron. He's waving his hands around, he's just throwing
words out and he's describing through speech. In comparison alone,
his experienced tasting fish sauce, and he might have been like,
well it's.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Sweet, oh I see so perhaps perhaps molasses large.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Sort of parents, the sort of sour ah so tamarinds.
Perhaps what indeed have fish eat somewhere.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Okay, we're gonna need to workshop this one for a while.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Ago like what we have to exercise empathy with Leah parents.
They got this crazy rich dude who is like, let
me just give you the vibes.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
There should be a tagline the rich We get things
done because you know, they've got the money to throw
around and the influence, and usually when they want a thing,
people kind of listen, and that tends to a times
only benefit the rich. But sometimes, Ben, sometimes you get
the trickle down of sauce that benefits the world.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Here's my question.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Was there any threats of hunged, drawn and quartered involved
in this?
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You never know, You never never know. You never.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
History is written by the victors, and these guys seem
to have done well by themselves because their name still
is emblazoned on the sauce.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Right. So they go back to this baron and they say, Okay,
based on your somewhat unhinged conversation, we have taken all
of the like flavor notes that you told us about.
We put them into this weird sort of mixtape and
(19:42):
here you go. We're not sure exactly what they handed him,
but the original thing probably had. Well. Do you want
to just read the list of ingredients?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, and I'm not gonna lie Vivin. I initially saw
this list and I'm like, okay, you know, I mean,
we don't have proportions here, but we've got barley malt
vin spirit vinegar, which I imagine is mean barley matt.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Would be a darker vinegar.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Spirit vinegar would be a little bit more of maybe
a bitter clear vinegar. Yeah, molasses, you know, and sugar
and salt, anchovies, tamar and extract challice, which were later
replaced by onions, garlic.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I hate this one though.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Man, I hate spices be so condescen It's like, come on, man,
which one h And also, of course flavor.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Rings even weirder. Probably probably some something citrual, probably like
lemons of some sort, like lemon juice sort. So why
not just say lemon lemons.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
You said molasses, you said tamar and extract. Yeah, it
certainly is a proprietary formula, despite the fact that we
do see other versions of them. There's going to be
pretty significant flavor differences. It's it's it's not exactly codified, right.
It sounds like we both I think thought this sounds okay,
that sounds you get behind that, except for the obfuscation
(21:02):
of the spices and flavorings. But apparently the first batch
was quite bad.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yeah. I was gonna say, who knows, it sounds eclectic,
but maybe it tasted awesome. It did not spoil. This
stuff was gross. And before we get to the plot
holes in that official kind of origin story, we know
for sure that leam Perrin's first crack at their Fishy
Sauce in eighteen thirty five was a swing in a miss.
(21:30):
Even the company itself later described that first pilot batch
as completely unpalatable, but they had some cost fallacy. They
spent so much time and money making barrels of this
stuff that was basically wet garbage juice.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Why would they have done that? Why wouldn't they have
a market tested at first before they made massive.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Scale of it. I mean they probably they were trying
to do the thing where you have a problem and
you keep adding to it, like in cooking. You know,
it's much easier to add a flavor than it is
to subtract a flavor. Sure, so I think they were
just like, hey, maybe this is going to be the one.
Maybe we need more molasses, or maybe we need more anchovies.
(22:17):
It didn't work, and they they didn't throw it away
because they had a sub cost. So instead they took
the barrels of this test condiment and they hid it
away in the basement of their pharmacy and just sort
of like wash their hands of it.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Wait a minute, this does sound a little apocryphal, but
let me guess we heard about this in a recent
story too, about a thing and maybe it was Rome.
What was it, ben? It was like some century men
had some like some material they stuck away because they
(22:56):
kind of forgot about it and then it fermented and
it was really good. Oh no, I'm sorry, I know
what it was. I looked at a mine. This was
not a ridiculous history moment. It is a a thing
in Japan that is basically fermented soybeans and it's called knock.
Oh gosh, it's it's it looks like sticky, cheesy kind
(23:17):
of beanstoea nato.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
It was featured in that show Showgun, where like these
women are eating it and they're kind of the you know,
black Black Moore or whatever the hell's name is.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
He asks what that is.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
He wants to try it, and they tell him it's
not really for you, it's not something you'll be into,
and he, you know, insists and he eats it and
he's like, oh, this is this. It tastes like spoiled
cheese or something. Right, but that kind of thing where
it's like ah, and they tucked it away. That The
story behind that was that there was some you know,
invading you know, group of soldiers that had their soybeans
(23:52):
stowed away and they forgot about them or they let
them basically, they wrapped them in some wet something or
other and then they fermented and became this NATO and
the General or whatever got a taste for it, and
next thing, you know, this is a staple food of Japan.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I have eaten so many strange things, and I will say,
I know this is sometimes a controversial opinion. NATO, to
me has always answered a question that I never thought
to ask, which is like, have you ever smelled a
diaper and thought, what if I could just eat that
for breakfast? Yeah? You know, yeah, I mean apparently, what's it?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Durian tastes real nice but smells like dirty diapers. Yeah,
I hope I was sort of on the right track.
But what happened with these barrels of this concoction that
they kind of shoved in the basement forgot about.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
You're absolutely on the right track more than a year past.
It wasn't until at least eighteen months later that someone
opens the door, you know, to the basement of the pharmacy.
They walk down the stairs and they see these barrels,
and they try the sauce or time. Maybe they were
thinking I could finally throw it away, but lo and behold,
(25:05):
this once wet garbage juice is now amazing, Like the
fermentation fixed it.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
You can't really plan for that, so, I mean you can,
but a lot of times it starts from these happy accidents,
like with the NATO, right, I mean again, you would
maybe argue that that was an unhappy accident, and.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
That's totally fine.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Some people do seem to really love it, whether it's
a taste you develop or whatever. Even in Japan, I
think there's like a certainly a percentage of the population
that can't stand the stuff. But awesome, man, I'm really
happy and really cool if true, really cool if true.
You know, this is a world changing condiment. It's definitely
an England changing condiment. You can put it on darn
(25:46):
near everything. And lets be honest, not to be a
negative Nelson, but British cuisine at the time could really
use the help. Yeah for sure. Obviously, again, apocryphal or not,
it does take time fermentation whatever, whether it be braising
or like long slow cooks or actual fermentation, which is
a chemical process to make flavors like what we're talking about,
(26:08):
the umami type of flavor. But if you have a
sauce like this, it almost gives you a shortcut. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, that's a really good point and they're also Worcestershire
is a runaway hit because people are buying a story
as much as they're buying a sauce. There's this mysterious
origin tale of a nobleman haunted by memories of this
sauce from foreign shores. There's another mystery because the first
consumers don't know what is in this. They just think
(26:38):
it's tasty. That's a heck of a trust fall. They
don't care.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
You know, who cares, Especially in those days. It certainly
wasn't the era of I need you know, listed ingredients
and nutritional facts and calorie counting government regulation. Right of course,
there was no There was no food and drug administration.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
We were coasting on a wing and a prayer and
a tasty sauce.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Which is thankful that lady fingers don't have actual women's
fingers in them that we know of, that we know
of up to a certain point. There's a percentage of
fingers allowed anyway. Yeah, you're absolutely right, dude. The ingredients
of the original leam Perrin's Worcestershire sauce, they were like
the Coca Cola secret recipe of the time. For decades,
(27:30):
there was a bit of a conspiracy afoot because you
can find a pharmacy catalog from their lab on Broad
Street and was dated to eighteen twenty three. We knew
that tamarind and anchovies were definitely in there, but it
would take until like two thousand and nine for the
(27:51):
world to get a closer look at the actual story
and the actual ingredients. And maybe that's where we go
to the real story. Uh, Noel, I think we've we've
teased it pretty well. How do we know that this
Baron Sandy thing is maybe a little embellished.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Well, i'll tell.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
You, Ben, we'll tell you. Actually, we'll do it together
as always. Uh.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
There may have been a nobleman, you know, in the
mix who was waving his arms around wildly and describing
these flavors that he had savored back in his time abroad. Uh,
but it probably wasn't the guy we described.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Who was what was his name again, Ben.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Sandy Baron, But it was, it was, It was a
whole like, oh, Lord, Marcus Sandy, the third baron Sandy's
I don't even understand what that means. The third Baron,
Baron of Sandy's Press. Anyway, his name is Marcus Sandy's
and we we think it probably likely was it him.
(28:55):
According to a memo written by Lee and Parn's accountant
and archivist Brian Keoh in nineteen ninety seven, Lord Sandy's
apparently never governed in Bengal or ever even traveled to India, Oh, extating.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
So it remains a mystery that as to who actually
was this apocryphal aristocrat who commissioned the first Worcestershire sauce
and the note here we're getting a lot of the
true story from our friends over at food republic dot com.
An excellent article by Andrew Housman called the Bizarre story
(29:37):
behind the invention of Worcestershire Sauce.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You can almost call him like a what do you
call it, a sauce patron, you know, a patron of
sauce instead of the arts of a benefactor. Exactly, Yes,
a sauce benefactor. As I love this, so we are
we do, have, of course, as is often the case
in you know, old stuff, competing versions of the story.
(30:02):
In eighteen eighty four, in the New York Times paper
of notes, It's been around for a long time, they
claimed that Sandy's wife wanted Lee in parents to recreate
a curry powder, which they then converted into sauce form
rather than like a powder, which is, you know, basically
just a blend of spices.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
All right, So a mysterious aristocrat returning from abroad, or
you're working with your working with your colleague and you're like, hey,
I know we got other stuff to do, but my
wife really wants this curry powder. I mean, take it
from what take it for what it is. We cannot
(30:45):
argue with the results. Worcestershire rips. Dude, it is amazing.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Oh man, I mean there's there's just nothing like it.
Like I said, when I hear the be like an
ad for Lean parents, but when I want that certain
flavor in my roast, I reach for Leon parents.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, and we know we mentioned two thousand and nine, right,
So shout out again to the archivist Brian Keo who
found notes dating back to the mid eighteen hundreds that
list different, let's say, different things they tried to add
in those barrels, so like cloves, different vinegars, pickles, ascetic acid.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Mmmm.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Oh yeah, it's just that that got the cable soup.
I love it now.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
It is yum acetic acid peppers, essence of lemons.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Some of these things probably.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Are what would be under that catch all of flavorings,
flavorings and spices. Yeah, those are some of the original ingredients,
and of course this changed as the chemist evolved the recipe.
But here's the thing we talked about today at the
top of the show. How in my mind I think
(32:07):
when I can't well, I don't want that certain extra
something I reads for Leeann Parents because in my mind
that is the quintessential, quintessential Worcester. There's just nothing else
like it that will quite do the trick for me.
But I have certainly gotten alternatives in the past and
they're fine, and there might even be you know, if
you really thought about it, you could almost treat it
(32:30):
like different hot sauces, where depending on which brand you
go with, you might get a different little kick.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
I don't know, Ben, what is your what's your experience.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Been with non Leean parents worcesters pretty similar?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
You know. There are brown sauces that are a little
bit heavier, like hybrids of you know, H and P
sauces kind of or HP sauce is kind of like
a hybrid of Worcestershire and ketchup. But maybe it maybe
it's the expectation or the nostalgia of lim parents because
(33:05):
I associated with steakhouses, you know, I associated with dashing
it into crock pots and slow cooking and prime ribs
and stuff like that. So I don't know, it's it's
crazy because we've got to talk about these different varieties.
We have mentioned this to each other a little bit
off air. It turns out the reason lim Parens is
(33:25):
not monopolistic, they're actually owned by Kraft. Heinds now is
that Worcestershire sauce became a generic term. In eighteen seventy six,
the English High Court said, you lot don't own a
trademark for the name woulceare absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Because for me it's the name of a town. It's
like Gene Simmons trying to trademark the rock and roll fingers,
like he can't. Turned out that he did try to
do that apparent. Oh wow, it's just out in the
ether at this point. Guys, you can't. Can can you
trademark a song?
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Well? Yes you can?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Can you trademark a breeze?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
You know? No you can't. Yeah, I mean we can
collectively say, what's this shirt. However you got here, We're
glad you made it to the plate. You ridiculous, amazing sauce.
One thing, oh, we should mention the iconic like paper
wrapping that comes from that comes from shipping to the US.
In eighteen thirty nine, a family in New York, the
(34:29):
Duncan family, starts importing this and the problem was the
bottles were breaking in transit on the ship, right, so
they wrapped it in that paper. And it's so iconic.
You know, if you go to the grocery store today
you look at this monopoly of sauces. The one that's
wrapped in paper is interesting. Right. Again, like to the
earlier point, there's something that feels almost secretive about it,
(34:54):
like you can't see this sauce, dude, And I'm sorry.
It really does remind me.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
And not that you like figure out a formula by
gazing into the sauce. But there's a synthesizer company from
Japan called Roland who made this really awesome analog cynthesizer
in the eighties called the Juno, and they notoriously would
break because they took the circuits, the pieces that actually
made the sound, and they coated them in this polyurethane
thing because they didn't want people to be able to
(35:20):
see the circuit design coming across the assembly lines. They
were worried about industrial espionage, but that ended up actually
biting them in the butt because it caused the things
to notoriously malfunction. So whenever you get one of the
repair people, will you know, soak them in acetone and
get rid of that that coating.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
So you're not wrong. Man. That's really really interesting in
terms of one of those I do, I do mention
it to me when you first got one. Does it work?
It does work, It works beautifully.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And I got it serviced by a guy who did
that very thing, literally took all the voice chips out
and soaked them in acetone and now it's like new.
But Ben, I gotta say, I was wondering about alternatives
to lean pair. I found a great article on the
Daily Meal listing thirteen best Worcestershire sauce brands that you
(36:08):
can buy, and I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
There's a couple like.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
One Barrel Bourbon Barrel aged one from Bourbon Barrel Foods
looks good, and there was one that's organic and vegan
by Wizard the company called Wizard, two very different data
points on the spectrum of mush. And then you've got Annie's,
of course, which you'll maybe know from their expensive Macardi
(36:32):
and cheese boxes, right Bunnies. But the one that interested
me the most and I thought was really unusual, especially
per our hot sauce conversation, Crystal, who makes you know
that pure Louisiana hot sauce?
Speaker 1 (36:45):
They make a Worcestershire sauce. Okay, I'm in. I want
to try it. I want to try them all.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I really want to broaden my Worcestershire horizons.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
For our buddy Brenton Nol. What's the name of that
bourbon Worcestershire Again, it.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Is just called bourbon barrel aged from bourbon barrel foods.
But if that one exists, I kind of imagine there's
like a niche, kind of bespoke world of Worcestershire sauces,
just like there is for hot sauce. But this one
is literally it's called bourbon barrel aged by bourbon barrel foods.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
That's for you. That's for you, mister Smith. We also,
it turns out we are not the only folks who
have had fun trying to pronounce the name of this sauce.
It was interesting learn. Twenty twenty one, lim Parents announced
a marketing campaign called Speak Your Sauce And so, yeah,
the little you know, the little paper that has the
(37:38):
lim Perrens Worcestershire sauce or whatever on there, they took
out the word worcesters and they put in just a
blank and air quotes or quotation marks, because you know
you're reading it, not speaking it. And they said this
was a limited edition. They said, with how we'd Speak
your Sauce bottles, we're officially embracing this struggle and celebrating
(38:01):
all the different pronunciations because anyway you Worcestershire works for us.
I don't love that they turned it into a verb.
But what I speak your truth, speak your sauce. Oh boy, yeah,
I guess you're right. It must be a speaker truth thing,
so you don't have to pronounce it any particular way.
(38:24):
Most people these days will know what you mean. And
I gotta tell you, guys, I am kind of pooped
from saying Worcestershire over and over again. I shan't speak.
It's the game counting this sentence. We have said the
word Worcestersher well over thirty two times.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Okay, I think that's respectable. Frankly, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
We overdid it. Do you guys want to hear my
take on sauce? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I can't have it because of the condition yep.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, the condition.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Well maybe we can, maybe we can tap the scientific
community to make a condition say version of this fabled sauce.
And I had one more to add that I think
Brandon would also like. There is a company called Bear
and Burton's and they make something called Wu Sauce, and
it looks like it comes in a couple.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Of different varieties.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
One of them is like a traditional America American Worcester,
and the other one is called fire Shire, which would
presumably be a spicy Worcestershire sauce.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
And it's apparently a very new brand.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
During the middle of the global pandemic, two fishermen this
also sounds apocryphal, named Bear and Burton found themselves out
of work with too much dime on their hands. They
began experimenting with Nana's w sauce and the brand quickly
took off.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
So now our count has to change. Now we've said
it well over thirty two times. Worcestershire. Worcestershire. The word
is haunting me, just like that mysterious sauce haunted some
apocryphal British nobleman centuries ago.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Can also get it in powder form, by the way,
we didn't put that out. You can get it like
in a spice blend packet kind of form.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
I love this stuff, man. I know, uh, you're on
the road, but when you get back in our fair
metropolis of Atlanta, we all got to get together. Let's
let's go grab some food somewhere. Every time we do
an episode, I get so hungry, almost grilling time, buddy,
and nothing goes with it. I mean, you know, we
haven't even talked about steak sauce because that's such a
(40:28):
catch all, massive ball of wax there. But I like
just a little bit of Worcester harsh sauce add to
the count with my steak. Yeah, as a condiment, not
just as a cooking implement. It's like a little dipping.
I like a little little dipper, a little dipper, a
little a zoo and uh, Avoi, folks, We're got you.
(40:49):
Avois folks, becazo tight to you as well, we hope
this finds you Guten tog uh yeah, yes, big vig.
Thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams. Thanks to
Alex Williams who composed his bang and bop. Thanks also
to our pal Brenton Smith. Brenton, we hope we did
(41:11):
your proud huge Thanks to Alex Williams who composed this theme.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Christopherrosiotis Eves Jeff cos Here in Spirit, the Quizitor, the
Puzzler Man. I was eating Canter's Deli yesterday and UH
in Los Angeles, and I had a callback to a
breakfast that AJ is the Puzzler and I had at
Barney Greengrass in in the Upper West Side of New York,
(41:34):
where we ordered a lock scrambled egg situation and I
tried it at cancers and I say, AJ, it was.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
It was pretty on points.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
It's pretty on point, but nothing can match the memory
of eating that breakfast with you.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Shout out yeah, Shout out to A J Bahamas Jacobs.
If you were listening, AJ, be well aware we might
see you sooner than you think.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yes, we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give a big thank you to
our super producer, mister Max Williams. Keep them all in check,
shut up buster rhymes.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Uh you say, I got to something on the something
and the something on your neck?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, I've heard For years I thought I heard that song.
You guys know I love hip hop, And for years
I thought he was saying, I've got the eggnog beep
that makes you sweat your neck. Who ha, I've got
you all in check. And I was like, man, New
York slaying is crazy. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I thought, Also, it means that that's actually quite good.
I beat like eggnog, make that.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Pretty good?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Them eggs to get that nog sounds so absolutely dirty,
like we're going to get flagged in our internal.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We only use whole eggs. Okay, last it has nothing
to do with today's episode, but uh, you guys, true story.
For a long time as well, I thought he was
saying I got you all in check like the country
of Chechia, like c z e h and I'm of.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
You in my mind in check at all times.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
What is like, Okay, Buster, if you're listening, Man, we're
big fans. I've been bullying with me as always is
the one and only the man, myth legend, mister Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
No you think you want Buster on the show? Oh man,
he's that's a big dude right there. Man, Man, he
got he got, he got swollen. He was always kind
of swollen, but he seems to have gotten swoller late
in life.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Over a time. Yeah. And uh and gosh, you can't
you can't mess with the rhymes. Uh. He's got a
sort of secret sauce. We could say segue. Uh, Noel,
you are on the road and Uh, I hope if
I had a little horse.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It's because it's early for me and my brain because
I've been on the West Coast long enough where i
have finally just finally adapted to West Coast brain, only
to have to adapt back to East Coast brain immediately.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah. We were we were talking off air, and I
was I always saying like, oh man, I've been there.
The time zones are weird. Uh, but we have uh,
we have a continuing mission which is to explore ridiculous
history and we want to start today's episode with a
big thanks to a good friend of of ours, mister
(03:00):
Brenton Smith from Station sixteen.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Of course, Brenton, by the way, a missive Dare we
say a mandate? Dare we say it is our charge
to explore ridiculous history?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yes? Yeah, check this out, Noel, So you and I
know Brenton, I would say pretty well at this point,
I was astonished to find that he actually listens to
the show Ridiculous time.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Every time I hear that anyone listens to the show,
I'm astonished, right.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Despite the fact that he has to hang out with
us on a regular basis in person as we make
a bunch of weird sketch comedy and other.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Videos, sometimes with you wigged out and costumed out as
George Washington traveling through time.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Hey, and you as the you, as the person who
introduces that poor guy to things like virtual reality or escalators.
I'm the straight man.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's this catch, but it's fine if you haven't seen those.
By the way, check out the stuff they don't want
you to know social media channels of note, and you
can see them.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
It's basically become an ongoing series.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
But Brenton fine, fond of Fine Whiskey's ball caps and
apparently sauce history. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, so he asked us. He said, you guys, you know,
I listened to the show, and also I like what
you're doing with these condiments. But why have you never
talked about Worcestershire. Worcestershire.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
See, that's going to become an ongoing thing. I mean,
there's just so many ways to make a meal out
of that. Sometimes I like to go wor You we go, Yeah,
Sometimes I like to shorten it to Wooster because we
know how that goes. What is it, though, Ben? What
is this brown juice of the Gods?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Hang on, I'm writing down the number of times that
we're saying this name. Okay, so we're already at like
four or five. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So most of us
who enjoy cooking will use this sauce Worces this year,
and we often, at least here in the US and
(05:15):
probably in England, we often buy it in a grocery
store with like a paper wrapping around it. The Lee
in Parents bottle. Yeah you remember those?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
You know It's true, Ben, And I've got to say,
in my mind, Lee and Parents is the only one
that exists, though I know there are other pretenders to
the throne.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
And it's a very interesting throne indeed, because we're most
all of us are familiar with the sauce, know it
and love it. But if we just straight up describe
the ingredients and the flavor, it would make even the
most articulate person sound absolutely bonkers. Luckily we are not
the most articulate people. Well we're articulately bonkers at least.
(05:56):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, it is a weird one, right, because there's nothing
else quite like it. It has some soy sauce vibes,
you know, it has some if you ever had like
liquid aminos, you know, something like that, or even what's
the other one MSG kind of vibes. But yet none
of those things and all of those things. It's it's
sort of a mystical brown liquid. Yeah, it's still not
(06:20):
quite all all the stuff we described as like part
of Worcestershire, but not quite the thing entire. So look,
we will throughout this episode use alternate pronunciations. You might
hear worcestershre Worcestershire or what'd you say worcesters Shire. I
(06:43):
liked Worcestershire, which I know is wrong. It's just fun
to say. It makes me feel like I'm tasting it
as I say it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, I like that. I like that form and function,
just like morocket taut us. You know, folks, if you
think the pronunciation is ridiculous, just wait till you hear
the origin story. Before we get to that, though, we
got to break down the flavor. Man, how would you
describe wors the shure sauce?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, I was, I was kind of beginning to because
I was trying to think of it. It's sort of
like a state of mind more than it even is
like a specifical flavor, right Florida.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Because I mean it has it's the tang and the
salts of something that we might recognize as like a
soy sauce, but then it has the it reveals these
other almost sweet and sour, a tiny bit of subtle
kind of floral notes or something. It really is just
it tas what does it taste like?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It tastes like, Yeah, there's a there's a central brightness respectively.
It's that floral bit that I was trying to Yeah,
I mean, there are layers to it. And with so
much going on palette wise, it's kind of surprising that
we would put it in so many different dishes. I mean,
we use it all the time.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Can we just start off off the rip saying that,
I think we're all pretty big fans of the stuff.
This is not the time where we rag on Wooster
higher sauce as a flavor. More just kind of maybe
lampoon the history of it a little bit and kind
of bring some things into the light. But boy, there's
nothing like it. When that's what you want, there's nothing
else you can to reach for, whether it be a soup,
(08:22):
a braise, perhaps even a saute. Yeah, yeah, just so,
And we want to go to Aleah Hoyt. Writing for
How Stuff Works, she interviewed Seamus Mullet, chef at the
Institute of Culinary Education, and he has one of the
best descriptions of this. He says, Worcestershire sauce is kind
(08:44):
of a flavor amplifier, right. It makes things deeper, it
makes things more savory. It's like the hip kids call
it oomammy ooh mommy.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
You know it's true, and we love that.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
It really is sort of what do they that they
say that there's like acid, heat, salt, and then the zumammy.
It was just sort of like an additional you know,
taste sense almost the way things hit your palate.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It's mushrooms, you know. That's the thing about your sauce.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It really has a mushroomy kind of flavor to it
as well to me anyway. But yeah, I'm sorry, that's right.
It's the fifth taste, right, umammy.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
After salty, sweet, bitter, and sour, And I.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Said acid heat and all of that, but those are
kind of the chefy ways of describing those.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yeah, Often umami is described as deliciousness and Chef Mullen.
Chef Mullen argues that umami brings out natural flavorings in food,
so he says it makes steak taste more steak, like
mushrooms more mushroomy, you know. Oh. We also we've got
(09:54):
to give a shout out to our friends Annie Lord
and Andrew over it. Save. Yeah, they've got a cool
history of umami. It wasn't really a Western thing until
the early nineteen hundreds thanks to an astonishing chemist and
professor named Kikune Ikeda something to do with msg in
(10:16):
that tale, I believe, right, Yes, sir, you are correct. Yeah, yeah,
and he was. He isolated this isolated glutamate and created
monosodium glue toamate.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
M ST, which it's a bad rap. Weirdly, we talked
about this in our History of Chinese Restaurants. MSG sort
of got unfairly maligned in sort of a weird racist
kind of slander campaign against Chinese restaurants.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, and he noticed even back when it was popularizing this,
he said, Okay, what I'll call what I'll call umami,
it really is signaling. Glutamate is signaling the presence of protein,
and human beings evolved to hunt protein. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Even in the Shefe type shows, they refer to the
big old slab of you know, main course, you know
goodness on your plate as your protein, whether it be
you know, beast or tofu.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Mm hmm yeah, whether it be tofurky or ribs. I mean. Also,
we were interested to learn you can taste glue tomate
if you're a human at concentration six and sixteen times
lower than sugar or salt. That is interesting. What does
it taste like? Just a dash will do it? It
tastes delicious? Yeah, okay, this is deliciousness.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
We're still talking about here, Okay, got it. So, without
going too too far into the food science of it all,
if you want a deeper dive onto that kind of stuff,
definitely please do check out Savor. We ought to point
out that a lot of savory foods which might be
considered umami rich, they need time to steep in those
flavors you know, low, slow and low, you know, or
(12:00):
a nice braize in its own juices of like a
pork loin or whatever it might be. Those things have
to really kind of set in and that does take
time and care.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah. Speaking with MPR of Flavored chemist named Ariel Johnson said,
a lot of umami esque or omamy rich foods are
fermented or slow cooked, like you said, like a bone
broth or kimchi, and it can take weeks, right kim
I mean like for some of these things, right, Yeah,
(12:31):
you know, kimchi started by burying this stuff. So we'll
see why this point about age is important about fermentation
because we know there is ancient history. One of humanity's
oldest condiments is garam and it had umami before people
use the word of mommy, it's a fermented fish sauce,
(12:53):
a precursor to Catsup Yeah, which later became Ketchup Yeah.
And Worcestershire probably isn't a direct descendant of Garhm, but
the flavor profiles have a lot in common. Fish sauces
were a staple in East Asian cooking for millennia, basically a.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Staple in both of our fridges as well.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Ben Oh, yes, sir, Yeah, you gotta have you gotta
have your sauces. You know, it's funny. I didn't think
about this.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Maybe it's been a while since we did the episode
on Ketchup, But Worcestershire Sauce as we know it today
really really is kind of the next evolution of that
Garum that was considered to be the precursor to Ketchup.
But modern day Ketchup doesn't resemble either of these things
at all. But Worcester Sauce really is kind of that
thing that we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Yeah, it's carrying the torch. We don't know whether the
original Worcestershire bros. Were trying to copy an existing variation,
like if they had a sample of it. But our
story starts with three guys. There are two of them.
(14:03):
John Wheeley Lee spelled l Ea and William Henry parents,
this chemist holy In parents.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
They started a business in eighteen twenty three in we're okay,
would this be woolster?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I think it's a wooster. I think it's a wooster.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Oh, you know, it's one of those things where you've
got Leicester but it's spelled Leicester. We've talked about this
in England, so would not it follow logically that Worcester
would be woolster.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
It's english Man. There are no rules, really.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And why have the shire on a place that already
is the name of basically a shire. Why not just
call it Worcester Sauce or Worcester Sauce anyway, we'll probably
get to that, but guess that's where they were operating
out of a little pharmacy on the high Street, which
was Broad Street, and they made tons of stuff. They
were doing lots of experimentation, many of which were with flavor.
(15:02):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah. They also went on to make a hair regrowth
tonic spoiler that spoiler it doesn't work, but try it
and soup. I don't know what to tell you. They
also quite possibly create a fable about their own fabled sauce,
So maybe I love it fable fabled, yeah, meta fable.
So maybe we can we can share the origin story
(15:25):
as they put it, and we'll learn about the third
character in the tail.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I'm just gonna nip this in the butd real quick, guys,
and see what the Internet says as to how we
should pronounce the name of this sauce. Not you gonna
change the way I pronounce it necessarily, but I'm just curious.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Oh we've got some tangents on that too. Man.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Okay, well, I'm excited to get to that. But it
says here a shy see, I can't.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Even do it.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Woos to sure, woos to shure it's a wu it
really is wu ha.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Wu stuff uh. And then sure sure, So when you
get to the end of it, you're just saying, sure, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I like Wooster Wooster, Sure sure Shyre in there, but
sure Shire enough.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Huh. That was a transition right there.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They did, in fact, you know, dabble in sorcery, sorcery
and sorcery sort of what do you call it, ben,
when you when you transmute things into other things, alchemy,
flavor alchemy.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
There we go. I like that, I'm a flavor alchemist.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
H and they had, at least on the early versions
of this this fabled sauce a little bit of a tagline, right,
how did that read?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Oh? They put out an ad shortly after they began sauce. Yeah,
and it says, quote, the Worcestershire sauce is prepared by
us from the favorite recipe of a nobleman of acknowledged gout,
which back then was not a bad thing, having good
taste acknowledged good isn't. Don't you get gouts from eating
(17:02):
too many rich foods? Yes?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I love language, It's so fun.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Let's terrifying.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Too much poulted meat from all that good taste and
makes you have a foot swellow And this was likely
referring to the nobleman in question, Lord Marcus Sandy's of
the third Baron Sandy's, who had grown accustomed to kind
of a garam like fish sauce that he had learned
about and kind of gotten a taste for while governing
(17:29):
a brawl in Bengal. I can see a real colonizer,
this fella.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Right. Yeah, let's picture this moment with this story. So,
an aristocrat returns to England from abroad and colonial India,
and he just cannot find his favorite condiment. I just
can't find my favorite condiments right, And he doesn't have
any physical samples, probably because he likes the stuff so
much he already ate it all. So picture him, like
(17:55):
Rick Rubin in all these recording sessions, we can picture
the baron. He's waving his hands around, he's just throwing
words out and he's describing through speech. In comparison alone,
his experienced tasting fish sauce, and he might have been like,
well it's.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Sweet, oh I see so perhaps perhaps molasses large.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Sort of parents, the sort of sour ah so tamarinds.
Perhaps what indeed have fish eat somewhere.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Okay, we're gonna need to workshop this one for a while.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Ago like what we have to exercise empathy with Leah parents.
They got this crazy rich dude who is like, let
me just give you the vibes.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
There should be a tagline the rich We get things
done because you know, they've got the money to throw
around and the influence, and usually when they want a thing,
people kind of listen, and that tends to a times
only benefit the rich. But sometimes, Ben, sometimes you get
the trickle down of sauce that benefits the world.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Here's my question.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Was there any threats of hunged, drawn and quartered involved
in this?
Speaker 1 (19:13):
You never know, You never never know. You never.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
History is written by the victors, and these guys seem
to have done well by themselves because their name still
is emblazoned on the sauce.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Right. So they go back to this baron and they say, Okay,
based on your somewhat unhinged conversation, we have taken all
of the like flavor notes that you told us about.
We put them into this weird sort of mixtape and
(19:42):
here you go. We're not sure exactly what they handed him,
but the original thing probably had. Well. Do you want
to just read the list of ingredients?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, and I'm not gonna lie Vivin. I initially saw
this list and I'm like, okay, you know, I mean,
we don't have proportions here, but we've got barley malt
vin spirit vinegar, which I imagine is mean barley matt.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Would be a darker vinegar.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Spirit vinegar would be a little bit more of maybe
a bitter clear vinegar. Yeah, molasses, you know, and sugar
and salt, anchovies, tamar and extract challice, which were later
replaced by onions, garlic.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I hate this one though.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Man, I hate spices be so condescen It's like, come on, man,
which one h And also, of course flavor.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Rings even weirder. Probably probably some something citrual, probably like
lemons of some sort, like lemon juice sort. So why
not just say lemon lemons.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
You said molasses, you said tamar and extract. Yeah, it
certainly is a proprietary formula, despite the fact that we
do see other versions of them. There's going to be
pretty significant flavor differences. It's it's it's not exactly codified, right.
It sounds like we both I think thought this sounds okay,
that sounds you get behind that, except for the obfuscation
(21:02):
of the spices and flavorings. But apparently the first batch
was quite bad.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yeah. I was gonna say, who knows, it sounds eclectic,
but maybe it tasted awesome. It did not spoil. This
stuff was gross. And before we get to the plot
holes in that official kind of origin story, we know
for sure that leam Perrin's first crack at their Fishy
Sauce in eighteen thirty five was a swing in a miss.
(21:30):
Even the company itself later described that first pilot batch
as completely unpalatable, but they had some cost fallacy. They
spent so much time and money making barrels of this
stuff that was basically wet garbage juice.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Why would they have done that? Why wouldn't they have
a market tested at first before they made massive.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Scale of it. I mean they probably they were trying
to do the thing where you have a problem and
you keep adding to it, like in cooking. You know,
it's much easier to add a flavor than it is
to subtract a flavor. Sure, so I think they were
just like, hey, maybe this is going to be the one.
Maybe we need more molasses, or maybe we need more anchovies.
(22:17):
It didn't work, and they they didn't throw it away
because they had a sub cost. So instead they took
the barrels of this test condiment and they hid it
away in the basement of their pharmacy and just sort
of like wash their hands of it.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Wait a minute, this does sound a little apocryphal, but
let me guess we heard about this in a recent
story too, about a thing and maybe it was Rome.
What was it, ben? It was like some century men
had some like some material they stuck away because they
(22:56):
kind of forgot about it and then it fermented and
it was really good. Oh no, I'm sorry, I know
what it was. I looked at a mine. This was
not a ridiculous history moment. It is a a thing
in Japan that is basically fermented soybeans and it's called knock.
Oh gosh, it's it's it looks like sticky, cheesy kind
(23:17):
of beanstoea nato.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
It was featured in that show Showgun, where like these
women are eating it and they're kind of the you know,
black Black Moore or whatever the hell's name is.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
He asks what that is.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
He wants to try it, and they tell him it's
not really for you, it's not something you'll be into,
and he, you know, insists and he eats it and
he's like, oh, this is this. It tastes like spoiled
cheese or something. Right, but that kind of thing where
it's like ah, and they tucked it away. That The
story behind that was that there was some you know,
invading you know, group of soldiers that had their soybeans
(23:52):
stowed away and they forgot about them or they let
them basically, they wrapped them in some wet something or
other and then they fermented and became this NATO and
the General or whatever got a taste for it, and
next thing, you know, this is a staple food of Japan.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I have eaten so many strange things, and I will say,
I know this is sometimes a controversial opinion. NATO, to
me has always answered a question that I never thought
to ask, which is like, have you ever smelled a
diaper and thought, what if I could just eat that
for breakfast? Yeah? You know, yeah, I mean apparently, what's it?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Durian tastes real nice but smells like dirty diapers. Yeah,
I hope I was sort of on the right track.
But what happened with these barrels of this concoction that
they kind of shoved in the basement forgot about.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
You're absolutely on the right track more than a year past.
It wasn't until at least eighteen months later that someone
opens the door, you know, to the basement of the pharmacy.
They walk down the stairs and they see these barrels,
and they try the sauce or time. Maybe they were
thinking I could finally throw it away, but lo and behold,
(25:05):
this once wet garbage juice is now amazing, Like the
fermentation fixed it.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
You can't really plan for that, so, I mean you can,
but a lot of times it starts from these happy accidents,
like with the NATO, right, I mean again, you would
maybe argue that that was an unhappy accident, and.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
That's totally fine.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Some people do seem to really love it, whether it's
a taste you develop or whatever. Even in Japan, I
think there's like a certainly a percentage of the population
that can't stand the stuff. But awesome, man, I'm really
happy and really cool if true, really cool if true.
You know, this is a world changing condiment. It's definitely
an England changing condiment. You can put it on darn
(25:46):
near everything. And lets be honest, not to be a
negative Nelson, but British cuisine at the time could really
use the help. Yeah for sure. Obviously, again, apocryphal or not,
it does take time fermentation whatever, whether it be braising
or like long slow cooks or actual fermentation, which is
a chemical process to make flavors like what we're talking about,
(26:08):
the umami type of flavor. But if you have a
sauce like this, it almost gives you a shortcut. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, that's a really good point and they're also Worcestershire
is a runaway hit because people are buying a story
as much as they're buying a sauce. There's this mysterious
origin tale of a nobleman haunted by memories of this
sauce from foreign shores. There's another mystery because the first
consumers don't know what is in this. They just think
(26:38):
it's tasty. That's a heck of a trust fall. They
don't care.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
You know, who cares, Especially in those days. It certainly
wasn't the era of I need you know, listed ingredients
and nutritional facts and calorie counting government regulation. Right of course,
there was no There was no food and drug administration.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
We were coasting on a wing and a prayer and
a tasty sauce.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Which is thankful that lady fingers don't have actual women's
fingers in them that we know of, that we know
of up to a certain point. There's a percentage of
fingers allowed anyway. Yeah, you're absolutely right, dude. The ingredients
of the original leam Perrin's Worcestershire sauce, they were like
the Coca Cola secret recipe of the time. For decades,
(27:30):
there was a bit of a conspiracy afoot because you
can find a pharmacy catalog from their lab on Broad
Street and was dated to eighteen twenty three. We knew
that tamarind and anchovies were definitely in there, but it
would take until like two thousand and nine for the
(27:51):
world to get a closer look at the actual story
and the actual ingredients. And maybe that's where we go
to the real story. Uh, Noel, I think we've we've
teased it pretty well. How do we know that this
Baron Sandy thing is maybe a little embellished.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Well, i'll tell.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
You, Ben, we'll tell you. Actually, we'll do it together
as always. Uh.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
There may have been a nobleman, you know, in the
mix who was waving his arms around wildly and describing
these flavors that he had savored back in his time abroad. Uh,
but it probably wasn't the guy we described.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Who was what was his name again, Ben.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Sandy Baron, But it was, it was, It was a
whole like, oh, Lord, Marcus Sandy, the third baron Sandy's
I don't even understand what that means. The third Baron,
Baron of Sandy's Press. Anyway, his name is Marcus Sandy's
and we we think it probably likely was it him.
(28:55):
According to a memo written by Lee and Parn's accountant
and archivist Brian Keoh in nineteen ninety seven, Lord Sandy's
apparently never governed in Bengal or ever even traveled to India, Oh, extating.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
So it remains a mystery that as to who actually
was this apocryphal aristocrat who commissioned the first Worcestershire sauce
and the note here we're getting a lot of the
true story from our friends over at food republic dot com.
An excellent article by Andrew Housman called the Bizarre story
(29:37):
behind the invention of Worcestershire Sauce.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You can almost call him like a what do you
call it, a sauce patron, you know, a patron of
sauce instead of the arts of a benefactor. Exactly, Yes,
a sauce benefactor. As I love this, so we are
we do, have, of course, as is often the case
in you know, old stuff, competing versions of the story.
(30:02):
In eighteen eighty four, in the New York Times paper
of notes, It's been around for a long time, they
claimed that Sandy's wife wanted Lee in parents to recreate
a curry powder, which they then converted into sauce form
rather than like a powder, which is, you know, basically
just a blend of spices.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
All right, So a mysterious aristocrat returning from abroad, or
you're working with your working with your colleague and you're like, hey,
I know we got other stuff to do, but my
wife really wants this curry powder. I mean, take it
from what take it for what it is. We cannot
(30:45):
argue with the results. Worcestershire rips. Dude, it is amazing.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Oh man, I mean there's there's just nothing like it.
Like I said, when I hear the be like an
ad for Lean parents, but when I want that certain
flavor in my roast, I reach for Leon parents.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah, and we know we mentioned two thousand and nine, right,
So shout out again to the archivist Brian Keo who
found notes dating back to the mid eighteen hundreds that
list different, let's say, different things they tried to add
in those barrels, so like cloves, different vinegars, pickles, ascetic acid.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Mmmm.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Oh yeah, it's just that that got the cable soup.
I love it now.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
It is yum acetic acid peppers, essence of lemons.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Some of these things probably.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Are what would be under that catch all of flavorings,
flavorings and spices. Yeah, those are some of the original ingredients,
and of course this changed as the chemist evolved the recipe.
But here's the thing we talked about today at the
top of the show. How in my mind I think
(32:07):
when I can't well, I don't want that certain extra
something I reads for Leeann Parents because in my mind
that is the quintessential, quintessential Worcester. There's just nothing else
like it that will quite do the trick for me.
But I have certainly gotten alternatives in the past and
they're fine, and there might even be you know, if
you really thought about it, you could almost treat it
(32:30):
like different hot sauces, where depending on which brand you
go with, you might get a different little kick.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
I don't know, Ben, what is your what's your experience.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Been with non Leean parents worcesters pretty similar?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
You know. There are brown sauces that are a little
bit heavier, like hybrids of you know, H and P
sauces kind of or HP sauce is kind of like
a hybrid of Worcestershire and ketchup. But maybe it maybe
it's the expectation or the nostalgia of lim parents because
(33:05):
I associated with steakhouses, you know, I associated with dashing
it into crock pots and slow cooking and prime ribs
and stuff like that. So I don't know, it's it's
crazy because we've got to talk about these different varieties.
We have mentioned this to each other a little bit
off air. It turns out the reason lim Parens is
(33:25):
not monopolistic, they're actually owned by Kraft. Heinds now is
that Worcestershire sauce became a generic term. In eighteen seventy six,
the English High Court said, you lot don't own a
trademark for the name woulceare absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Because for me it's the name of a town. It's
like Gene Simmons trying to trademark the rock and roll fingers,
like he can't. Turned out that he did try to
do that apparent. Oh wow, it's just out in the
ether at this point. Guys, you can't. Can can you
trademark a song?
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Well? Yes you can?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Can you trademark a breeze?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
You know? No you can't. Yeah, I mean we can
collectively say, what's this shirt. However you got here, We're
glad you made it to the plate. You ridiculous, amazing sauce.
One thing, oh, we should mention the iconic like paper
wrapping that comes from that comes from shipping to the US.
In eighteen thirty nine, a family in New York, the
(34:29):
Duncan family, starts importing this and the problem was the
bottles were breaking in transit on the ship, right, so
they wrapped it in that paper. And it's so iconic.
You know, if you go to the grocery store today
you look at this monopoly of sauces. The one that's
wrapped in paper is interesting. Right. Again, like to the
earlier point, there's something that feels almost secretive about it,
(34:54):
like you can't see this sauce, dude, And I'm sorry.
It really does remind me.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
And not that you like figure out a formula by
gazing into the sauce. But there's a synthesizer company from
Japan called Roland who made this really awesome analog cynthesizer
in the eighties called the Juno, and they notoriously would
break because they took the circuits, the pieces that actually
made the sound, and they coated them in this polyurethane
thing because they didn't want people to be able to
(35:20):
see the circuit design coming across the assembly lines. They
were worried about industrial espionage, but that ended up actually
biting them in the butt because it caused the things
to notoriously malfunction. So whenever you get one of the
repair people, will you know, soak them in acetone and
get rid of that that coating.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
So you're not wrong. Man. That's really really interesting in
terms of one of those I do, I do mention
it to me when you first got one. Does it work?
It does work, It works beautifully.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
And I got it serviced by a guy who did
that very thing, literally took all the voice chips out
and soaked them in acetone and now it's like new.
But Ben, I gotta say, I was wondering about alternatives
to lean pair. I found a great article on the
Daily Meal listing thirteen best Worcestershire sauce brands that you
(36:08):
can buy, and I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
There's a couple like.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
One Barrel Bourbon Barrel aged one from Bourbon Barrel Foods
looks good, and there was one that's organic and vegan
by Wizard the company called Wizard, two very different data
points on the spectrum of mush. And then you've got Annie's,
of course, which you'll maybe know from their expensive Macardi
(36:32):
and cheese boxes, right Bunnies. But the one that interested
me the most and I thought was really unusual, especially
per our hot sauce conversation, Crystal, who makes you know
that pure Louisiana hot sauce?
Speaker 1 (36:45):
They make a Worcestershire sauce. Okay, I'm in. I want
to try it. I want to try them all.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I really want to broaden my Worcestershire horizons.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
For our buddy Brenton Nol. What's the name of that
bourbon Worcestershire Again, it.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Is just called bourbon barrel aged from bourbon barrel foods.
But if that one exists, I kind of imagine there's
like a niche, kind of bespoke world of Worcestershire sauces,
just like there is for hot sauce. But this one
is literally it's called bourbon barrel aged by bourbon barrel foods.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
That's for you. That's for you, mister Smith. We also,
it turns out we are not the only folks who
have had fun trying to pronounce the name of this sauce.
It was interesting learn. Twenty twenty one, lim Parents announced
a marketing campaign called Speak Your Sauce And so, yeah,
the little you know, the little paper that has the
(37:38):
lim Perrens Worcestershire sauce or whatever on there, they took
out the word worcesters and they put in just a
blank and air quotes or quotation marks, because you know
you're reading it, not speaking it. And they said this
was a limited edition. They said, with how we'd Speak
your Sauce bottles, we're officially embracing this struggle and celebrating
(38:01):
all the different pronunciations because anyway you Worcestershire works for us.
I don't love that they turned it into a verb.
But what I speak your truth, speak your sauce. Oh boy, yeah,
I guess you're right. It must be a speaker truth thing,
so you don't have to pronounce it any particular way.
(38:24):
Most people these days will know what you mean. And
I gotta tell you, guys, I am kind of pooped
from saying Worcestershire over and over again. I shan't speak.
It's the game counting this sentence. We have said the
word Worcestersher well over thirty two times.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Okay, I think that's respectable. Frankly, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
We overdid it. Do you guys want to hear my
take on sauce? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:50):
I can't have it because of the condition yep.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, the condition.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Well maybe we can, maybe we can tap the scientific
community to make a condition say version of this fabled sauce.
And I had one more to add that I think
Brandon would also like. There is a company called Bear
and Burton's and they make something called Wu Sauce, and
it looks like it comes in a couple.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Of different varieties.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
One of them is like a traditional America American Worcester,
and the other one is called fire Shire, which would
presumably be a spicy Worcestershire sauce.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
And it's apparently a very new brand.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
During the middle of the global pandemic, two fishermen this
also sounds apocryphal, named Bear and Burton found themselves out
of work with too much dime on their hands. They
began experimenting with Nana's w sauce and the brand quickly
took off.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
So now our count has to change. Now we've said
it well over thirty two times. Worcestershire. Worcestershire. The word
is haunting me, just like that mysterious sauce haunted some
apocryphal British nobleman centuries ago.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Can also get it in powder form, by the way,
we didn't put that out. You can get it like
in a spice blend packet kind of form.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
I love this stuff, man. I know, uh, you're on
the road, but when you get back in our fair
metropolis of Atlanta, we all got to get together. Let's
let's go grab some food somewhere. Every time we do
an episode, I get so hungry, almost grilling time, buddy,
and nothing goes with it. I mean, you know, we
haven't even talked about steak sauce because that's such a
(40:28):
catch all, massive ball of wax there. But I like
just a little bit of Worcester harsh sauce add to
the count with my steak. Yeah, as a condiment, not
just as a cooking implement. It's like a little dipping.
I like a little little dipper, a little dipper, a
little a zoo and uh, Avoi, folks, We're got you.
(40:49):
Avois folks, becazo tight to you as well, we hope
this finds you Guten tog uh yeah, yes, big vig.
Thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams. Thanks to
Alex Williams who composed his bang and bop. Thanks also
to our pal Brenton Smith. Brenton, we hope we did
(41:11):
your proud huge Thanks to Alex Williams who composed this theme.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Christopherrosiotis Eves Jeff cos Here in Spirit, the Quizitor, the
Puzzler Man. I was eating Canter's Deli yesterday and UH
in Los Angeles, and I had a callback to a
breakfast that AJ is the Puzzler and I had at
Barney Greengrass in in the Upper West Side of New York,
(41:34):
where we ordered a lock scrambled egg situation and I
tried it at cancers and I say, AJ, it was.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
It was pretty on points.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
It's pretty on point, but nothing can match the memory
of eating that breakfast with you.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Shout out yeah, Shout out to A J Bahamas Jacobs.
If you were listening, AJ, be well aware we might
see you sooner than you think.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yes, we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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