A very brief history of brown sauce
Beloved of everyone from prime ministers to Sir John Betjeman, brown sauce — arguably Britain’s favourite piquant condiment — has a wonderfully rich history.
'England,’ wrote Voltaire, ‘has 42 religions, but only two sauces’. We may dispute the great philosopher’s figures, but it is certain that, if our nation did have only a pair of sauces, one of them would be brown.
Brown sauce is the most British of condiments and the English East Midlands can claim to be its epicentre. In Bottesford, Leicestershire, a company founded by David Hoe may have (we speak advisedly, because the origin of brown sauce is the subject of fiercer debate than the Kennedy assassination) produced Britain’s first commercial brown sauce sometime in the mid 19th century.
Hoe’s sauce was advertised as being patronised by ‘the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Rutland and members of the Melton Hunt’. It is possible the recipe drew inspiration from a traditional condiment thickened with elderberries and sometimes called Pontack Sauce. The godmother of English food writing, Florence White, notes that this elderberry-based sauce was often associated with Melton Mowbray — and, in particular, with Sir Charles Sedley, a keen hunting man whose country seat was a few miles away in Rutland.
'Condiment conspiracy theorists posit a counter-narrative in which an inveterate gambler named Harry ‘HP’ Palmer sold his recipe for Famous Epsom Sauce to Garton to pay off his debts'
Hoe’s claim to being the progenitor of brown sauce is disputed in Nottinghamshire. In New Basford, Frederick Garton began making his Banquet Sauce in the 1880s. His recipe was a product of Empire, blending tomatoes, tamarind, molasses, dates, soy sauce and spices with malt vinegar. On discovering it was being served in the restaurant at the Palace of Westminster, Garton rebranded his product as Houses of Parliament Sauce, trademarking the name in 1895. That, at least, is the official story. Condiment conspiracy theorists posit a counter-narrative in which an inveterate gambler named Harry ‘HP’ Palmer sold his recipe for Famous Epsom Sauce to Garton to pay off his debts.
Whatever the truth, in 1903, Garton was in hock himself and offloaded his sauce and trademark to the Midland Vinegar Company of Birmingham. With a stable home at last, HP Sauce was set to conquer the world; its global status celebrated by the description on the bottle label, written in both English and French (the legend ‘La Sauce HP est un Melange du Haute Qualite’ would remain until 1984).
It is possible that Brands of Piccadilly had marketed its A.1. Sauce (the name is alleged to have been given to it by George IV) even before Hoe and Garton and Crosse & Black-well of Soho unleashed a sea of piquant condiments in the 1840s that included Sir Robert Peel’s Sauce, the first — but, as we shall see, not the last — sauce to be endorsed by a British Prime Minister. Later additions to the brown-sauce firmament included Hammonds Chop Sauce, Daddies Favourite Sauce (originally Daddie’s; the baffling apostrophe was dropped at about the time that National Service ceased) and OK Sauce (an underwhelming name that suggests the firm might also have released a Par-for-the-Course Pickle).
'Although recipes incorporate distinctly un-British ingredients such as mirin, the resemblance to our own brown sauce is uncanny — a little touch of the English chippy in the neon Tokyo night'
Despite scepticism among our European friends, brown sauce is hugely popular in other parts of the world. Most OK Sauce is exported to South-East Asia, whereas A.1. enjoys great popularity in Taiwan and the US (where it was advertised, fittingly, by the singer Meat Loaf). In Japan, tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlets) comes accompanied by a thick, fruity brown sauce developed in the 1940s. Although recipes incorporate distinctly un-British ingredients such as mirin, the resemblance to our own brown sauce is uncanny — a little touch of the English chippy in the neon Tokyo night.
In Britain, brown sauce became ubiquitous during rationing, giving a welcome boost of what the Japanese would call umami to bland wartime food, or ‘helping out the odds and ends and putting everyone in a good humour’, as Daddies adverts claimed. In 1940, John Betjeman captured the national mood when he wrote of giving ‘the HP Sauce another shake’ in his poem Lake District.
Sales were given a further lift in the 1960s when Mary Wilson, wife of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, told journalists that her husband’s only vice was ‘drowning everything in HP Sauce’ (the media started calling brown sauce ‘Wilson’s gravy’).
Today, sales of HP Sauce comprise a whopping 28 million bottles per year. It might be a national success story, except that, in 2006, owners Heinz announced it was moving production to mainland Europe. In a tacit tribute to his predecessors at No 10 Downing Street, then Prime Minister Tony Blair supported a ‘Save our Sauce’ campaign.
Alas, it failed: this great staple of our island’s cuisine, which once billed itself as ‘The Official Sauce of Great Britain’, is now made by the Dutch. Please feel free to put aside your bacon sarnie and boo.
