Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce

Made to a recipe brought back from India in the 1820s by Lord Sandys, a local nobleman, the sauce was first made by two Worcester chemists, John Wheeley Lea and William Perrins in Broad Street. They were not impressed by the initial taste of the concoction and left it in vats to gather dust. But returning to the store room a few years later they decided on one last taste before throwing it away and discovered that it had matured into a sauce of delicious piquancy. Finding that it was very much to the liking of their friends, they started retailing it and within a few years it had become popular throughout Europe.

Exported today throughout the world, the sauce makes an ideal accompaniment to meat and spicy sauces and is an indispensable ingredient in cheesy Welsh Rarebit and, with vodka and tomato juice in the ever-popular Bloody Mary cocktail created in 1921 by Fernand Petiot the barman at Harry's New York Bar in Paris.