Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Worcestershire Sauce

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy podcasters/writers David Christopher Bell and Tom Reimann (Gamefully Unemployed, 'Fox Mulder Is A Maniac' podcast) for a look at why Worcestershire sauce is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Worcestershire sauce, known for flavor, famous for pronunciation. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Worcestershire sauce is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Because we're doing a condiment today, and I have brought back two wonderful returning guests, David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman. You may remember them from the ketchup episode, or the mayonnaise episode,

or other episodes, too. We decided to come back together for Worcestershire sauce. Or other episodes, too, we decided to come back together for Worcestershire sauce. Dave and Tom do comedy, podcasting, live streaming so much more under the Patreon name Gamefully Unemployed. You know, like gainfully, but gamefully unemployed. Also, Tom runs the Weird History YouTube channel, which is a great channel from Ranker. Dave is a writer of films and writer of scripts for the fantastic Some More News YouTube channel. I'm so glad Tom and Dave are back, especially because they were on the ketchup episode of this podcast and the mayonnaise episode of this podcast, which dovetails pretty neatly with this topic. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like

native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Dave and Tom each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about Worcestershire sauce, or as I understood it to be pronounced as a kid, Worcestershire sauce, which is not it, but that's okay. Worcestershire sauce is the top patron chosen topic for this month. There's three patron chosen topics every month. Go to sifpod.fun if you want to get involved. Thank you to patron Garrett Cooper for that suggestion.

Also patron Succugus and many other listeners for cheering it on. It's swept through the poll and I can see why. It's a thing people have heard of. It's a thing I knew nothing about until researching this. Also, in case you know truly nothing about it, Worcestershire sauce is a condiment, and it's a brown, thin sauce. Sometimes it's a marinade, too. And the main top brand of it in the world, it's a brand called Lee & Perrins. That's two last names. L-E-A is Lee, and then Perrins, P-E-R-R-I-N-S.

They're the main makers of this, and beyond that, people don't know much more. So let's get into more. Please sit back or gather your many meats. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman. I'll be back after we wrap up. talk to you then. So ready. So ready to go. Yeah. Dave, Tom, we're back for condiments.

We're doing it. This is a thrill to me. I'm so happy. Condiments! Stuff you put on other stuff. Yeah. Making it taste good like there's an air horn for it but it makes a huge mess like it's like like it's just it's the best man they're the best yeah honestly it's food lubricant it's one of the best things we've ever invented as a race of creatures. Right.

You need to eat healthy. You soak that rice cake in some condiments and then you're healthy. You lubricate it. Yeah. It's food lubricant. Yeah. What if absolutely everything tasted like a better tasting liquid? Exactly.

I think that's just a good idea. Or a better tasting salad. There's all kinds of ways to go. I'm dedicating the back half of my life to just finding out how many things I can make taste like ranch dressing. Yeah. A lot of things. It's everything. It's literally everything, you guys.

Yeah. It's a whole new world. I'm like Jasmine on the magic carpet. Yeah. My world has suddenly been expanded. You're making a nice tea. Making a nice tea. Squirt a an iced tea. Making an iced tea. Squirt a little ranch in there.

Mix it around. You got yourself a ranch iced tea. What do you think makes Lipton brisk? Brisk. Exactly. A little dollop of ranch. Yeah. That's ranch, baby.

Yeah. That's that cool ranch. The briskness of cool ranch. I guess we're talking about the field of the topic. Then normally we start with how we feel about the specific topic. But I want to start with one of the stats and numbers immediately. And then we'll talk about our specific relationship to this. But Stats and Numbers always has a segment name and title this week that is called...

We're doing the Stats Time Numbers. We're doing the stats time Numbers We're talking about stats and numbers and don't it feel good Oh man, I was about to join in with talking about stats, but it's not the lyrics thing I mean, it's hard to join in when we don't know the lyrics

but we love the song. I tried to anticipate it. Yeah. Just coasting on your enthusiasm, but I held my tongue and I'm glad I did. And that name, it was submitted by Adam Birch. Thank you, Adam. Thank you. He has a new name for this segment every week.

Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. But the preliminary number for this specific topic is two, because two is the rough number of correct pronunciations of the name Worcestershire sauce. I have spent a lot of time trying to get this right before the taping, and I think I'm doing it right. It was a real hill to climb going into this one. Here's... Oh, boy. I have something I need to say at the top of this, too.

I am from Massachusetts, where we have Worcester. Worcester, Mass. Which you know if someone's not from there, where they they call it Worchester because that's how it's spelled. Worchester sounds like, yeah, that sounds like a dope like wow clan. Yeah. Yeah. Similarly, where I grew up in Virginia, and it's actually where my wife is from, a place called Gloucester, which is spelled like Worcester.

Right. Like Gloucestershire. I know that's how to say that. spelled like Worcester Worcester so right like yeah Gloucestershire I know that's how to say that so yeah Worcestershire it's the old New England technique of just taking the towns from England and doing them again that's like most towns on the east coast yeah hence New England yeah yeah I just really gave up on that one. Oh, yeah. I mean, Virginia is just like, who's the queen? I don't know.

Virginia? Yeah. Right. Oh, right. It was like the Virgin Queen. That's right. It was something to do with the queen. I don't know.

It's English. It's all English. It's all ****. Yeah. Sorry. So, going back. So, it's Worcestershire? Yeah.

And there's really just kind of one way to pronounce it. The only difference is whether you have a British accent or an American accent, basically. It's how you say all your stuff can vary this. But the British pronunciation, and this all comes from these towns, Worcester, England, Worcester, Massachusetts has the same name. If you're American, it sounds like Worcestershire, because we tend to say the R at the end of words. And then the more British version is more like Worcestershire, you know?

Like, the ending changes slightly depending on British or American. But otherwise, like, even though it's spelled like it should be like Worcestershire sauce, I would think. Reading this word as a kid is mind-blowing. You're like, what is that? I mean, if you're from Worcester, Mass., you're going to call it Worcester. You're going to say Worcester, yeah. I was about to say, that still sounds New England.

Worcestershire. Worcester. Yeah, Boston is a little British on this, yeah. Like, it's very... That's good, he doesn't even know how to say Worcester. Yeah, I dave would have in particular experience with this a bizarre way of speaking but especially like being away from the former new england former 13 colonies growing up i i really didn't experience this way of

talking for a while really it was a really hard sauce to say i don't think i was ever asked to say it but boy oh boy it's it's a very adult condiment because it's it's a it's a flavor that's like super challenging and so when you're like a kid and you're still kind of like forming your your palate and stuff it's like way too complicated for little kids so i don't think a single child likes worcestershire sauce oh yeah and they also the second layer of gatekeeping is that name you're just like i don't even know how to say that so this is not for kids no kids allowed it might as well be booze i was about to say it's the bourbon of condiments yeah because it's like it's really inaccessible uh for a while and it's got that wonderful bite i mean i i love it i love it and you're not a child dave that's

true it's been some time i'm a child at heart tom that's true that's true yeah what's your by the way uh famously known for uh tollbooth willie right the adam sandler uh sketch of tollbooth willie i don't know that, so this is really fun. Oh, it's from one of his albums. It starts with him going, Welcome to Worcester. Dollar 25, please. Yeah, it's the famous Tollbooth Willie

we all know and love, Worcester. And that's pretty much it for pop culture. That's about the beginning and end of Worcester. Yeah. And that was the town. And what we're saying about the flavor that covers us at least partly for, yeah. What's our relationship to it.

What's our opinion of it. I, I needed to buy a bottle of it like today to try it for, I think the first time it might've been like mixed into sauces I've had or something or marinades i've had but i have never tried to have this condiment until until making this podcast that's how you know how serious it is right like they wouldn't like restaurants and stuff mix ketchup and mayonnaise all the time and it's like whatever but they wouldn't dare with worcestershire sauce yeah i i actually legit question because i've had i've had worcestershire sauce. Yeah, I actually legit question because I've had Worcestershire,

but like it tends to be in a sauce that I'm making as an ingredient. And I'll like have a little while I'm cooking because it's like, mm, that bite. But like, is there anything you just put this on without anything else? I got the main kind, I think, but it was so runny. It didn't really make

sense for like dipping stuff so much it's sort of like steak sauce that way so you just dip steak in it and that's it yeah it's like soy sauce yeah and the bottle was like full of propaganda about how worcestershire sauce has way less sodium than soy sauce that was that seems to be their competitor from my research and also the experience of a lee and Perrin's bottle that I got in Brooklyn. Wow, that's wild to me because soy sauce and Worcestershire, like, very different. Yeah, very different. Very different. I don't see them as interchangeable at all.

No, but, like, just citing the two, like, the bottles look very similar, especially if you're getting Lee and Perrin's specifically. It looks, like, exactly like a bottle of soy sauce. It does. So maybe that's like, it'd be funny if their entire story behind the competition between the two is just that they get mistaken for each other because they're in similar bottles. Right. And they're like, I'm not changing my bottle. And they're like, well, I'm not changing my bottle either.

So I feel like there was a similar battle. Yeah. In the mayonnaise episode. Right. It was something about like the fake mayonnaise. Oh yeah. The two types a similar battle. Yeah. In the mayonnaise episode, right? It was something about like the fake mayonnaise. Oh yeah. The two types of vegan mayonnaise. Yeah.

Oh, that was so fun. Like, Oh yeah. Just mayo. Yeah. Alex, how did you like it?

I, it's like you guys said about it being a bourbon or being not for kids. Like I enjoyed it as a thing to dip a little bit of sausage in i because i read that it's mainly for meats and fishes and stuff so i was like okay i'll try this bit of sausage and it was good and i think if i had had it even like three or four years ago i might not have been advanced enough to enjoy it like like because i'm not very into a vinegary flavor, but it reminds me of some fish sauces I've had now. And I also was and still kind of am very picky. So it's a hard ramp for the sauce to go up.

But it went up the ramp. I was into it. Interesting. So you never did vinegar on fries? When I was briefly in the UK, I would order fish and chips at a chip shop. And they would try to throw vinegar on it without me asking them to. And I would basically like throw my body across the counter trying to stop

them. I would be like, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no goblet sorry no in london they do like a cone of chips and it'd just be soaked in it and you'd have a fork and it was delicious uh i'm sorry i'm sorry you can't experience that yeah people who like salt and vinegar chips and stuff or or like carolina barbecue is very vinegary like i know there's a whole vinegar scene and it's not for me i'm not into it it's incorrect yeah i don't i don't agree with it i love it yeah do not agree with the vinegar scene it's like no you're all wrong all these people like the salt vinegar is my favorite chip no it's not you're you're doing this on this is like a put on yeah you are you are forcing this to be your personality and i do not believe you

yeah it's so good i don't believe i do not believe you i'll do a few shots of apple cider vinegar calms the tummy i've seen him do it that's that's true at least yeah it's delicious that's dave committing to the vinegar bit yeah i mean i i used to like if i have vinegar in a salad or something yeah i'll drink the vinegar afterwards what um that that like gag revulsion it gives i love it it's like drinking a shot of whiskey like it's just like this bite i love it yeah dave i think i underappreciated something you said earlier did you say that when you're cooking sometimes you'll have a little bit of worcestershire sauce just as like like straight up yeah yeah i'm really taking that in now wow it's good yeah

really it's really fascinating it's it's really a probes it's really good nips of the worcestershire sauce like it's cooking sherry yeah i don't think i'm alone here we were we were we were comparing it to like the adult beverage of sauces so that's like very fitting if you were sitting there making like whiskey or like putting uh whatever you use whatever recipe you use like whiskey or bourbon and it's like you know take a little shot of it while you're cooking exactly and now that i've quit drinking like it is like i don't get to uh drink revolting things anymore like poison things that my body are like are you you're trying to kill me right now so it's nice to have a little shot every now and then of vinegar uh yeah or a little bit worcestershire sauce like it's uh yeah that's i mean it takes me back i don't know that vinegar is technically not poison it's they're both the kind of thing that if you drink you think you've

it's they're both the kind of thing that if you drink you think you've uh ingested something that went bad right like you think oh do i have botulism now you know like there's this burn to them that make them so unique yeah and there's fermentation with the sauce as we'll talk about a little later like yeah it does it's a complex thing that is like not necessarily something your body wants, but it does because your mind says yes. You know, like, great. Yeah. My mouth is it's been watering this whole time. Like I am. Seriously, when we're done, guess what I'm doing?

You know? Oh, yeah. I'm going to. Cocktail hour. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to... Cocktail hour. Yeah.

Yeah. Speaking of ingredients, I think we can get into the rest of the numbers because one of them is about what's in this. The next number is 18. And 18 is the number of ingredients in one recipe I found for homemade Worcestershire sauce. Wow. We don't know like the secret Lee and Perrins, which is the main brand recipe, but the spruceeats.com is a pretty popular food site.

They have an 18-ingredient recipe for you to make this sauce at home. So I guess you don't have to buy it. It's a lot of labor. What are some of the ingredients? Yeah, I'm so curious. I think I'm just going to do all of them fast. So 18 ingredients here we have olive oil sweet onions tamarind paste garlic ginger

jalapenos anchovies tomato paste cloves black pepper dark corn syrup molasses white vinegar dark beer orange juice water lemon and lime i see i feel like the vinegar overpowers every single other ingredient in there because until you get to vinegar i'm like this should be pretty sweet like this would be pretty dope sauce and you get to vinegar it's like oh there it is yeah just let the air out of the tires it seems like it was made by someone who just like opened their fridge and was like what do i have right like that's the impression i get it seems like somebody trying to mask the flavor of vinegar right or like the the other way is it feels it's such a unique thing that it feels like it should just exist on its own

like it's something that we you like right like it should come from the stump of a worcestershire tree exactly or like you you like go to a crypt and it's like dripping off of the tombstones oh yeah that's it's definitely corpse juice yeah yeah it's delicious but yes yeah it's like one or the other like a text adventure like you approach the mouth of a cave worcestershire sauce drips from the top of it. What do you do? It's like, well, definitely not collect it. I run into or away. Good thing I brought these mason jars.

I do my own canning. And yeah, and then the rest of the recipe is pretty simple. You, in stages stages heat and combine all of those things then you simmer it for about five hours and then you strain out the sauce you get after that so that's that's so much so much work just to end up with worcestershire sauce yeah but now i want to do it i want to make homemade worcestershire that my little bottle of it was like three dollars uh it was like $3. Just go buy it, folks.

That's way more than $3 of work you just described. It's about the journey. Anytime you start getting into like, let it do anything for five hours, it's like, I think I'll spend the three bucks. Yeah. Because whatever I make is going to end up tasting like **** anyways. I might as well get the.

Oh, yeah. What a terrible feeling when your homemade Worcestershire sauce does not work. Yeah, because you'd never know. You'd never know. I just like the idea of feeding someone Worcestershire sauce and being like, you like it? I made it myself. Because that's like the weirdest thing to have made yourself. You wrung this out of your clothing did you secrete this like what do you mean you made it nothing it's just

a natural response that my body has produces Worcestershire sauce yeah you're like do you want some more I'll be right back and they're like i don't like that i don't like that at all but you'll be right back where you're going i feel like you were in the next room for 30 seconds that doesn't seem like long enough to prepare anything in a healthy way that i should then eat yeah well and uh next uh next number this little UK stuff, the number is two hours, eight minutes. And two hours, eight minutes is a time estimate I found for a train trip from London to Worcester. We're talking about Worcester, UK here, where it is. Google Maps says you can take the Great Western Railway from Paddington Station in London to the city of worcester in two hours and eight minutes

on a monday and in general worcester is in the west midlands of england that's northwest of london it's near birmingham and then worcestershire is a historic county that it's in so that's where this place is the map you're showing me it's also about the same distance from nottingham which is that's pretty chill i want to go there i've been to i've been to england once and i think so i went up to morcambe england and i don't know exactly where that is i know it's north but i took a bus trip the only reason i remember is because i went through northampton which is the town i was born in massachusetts which was kind of delightful and this just makes me want to go back so I can hit up Worcester and Northampton.

Yeah. And I don't know, see all the Massachusetts sites, the bizarro versions. Yeah. If you grew up in Massachusetts, England must feel like reverse fan fiction or something. It was weird. Yeah. There was a bunch of towns going through of like yeah that's no that place no that place yeah yeah i i always wonder if there's like a british me there you know

probably yeah the top hat and the mustache yeah but it is weird looking at this map because also southampton that's massachusetts i'm from portsmouth and there it is right below south hampton we really we were really uncreative about like leicester was also a place nearby me and that's up there massachusetts it's literally we either stole it from england or from native americans it's one or the other like well it's not that we stole it it's the british people landing here we're like what's this place called? I don't know. Portsmouth?

Why? Because that's where I'm from? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Illinois is far enough west that the colonizers stole just other world city names. There's an Ottawa, Illinois, and there's a Paris, Illinois. And I think there's a Pekin, Illinois, which was's a pecan illinois which was based on peking like an old name for beijing like they're just take they just took everything else they could think of

it's very silly you start getting into that down south too oh really i don't get it vienna georgia except they call they pronounce they say vienna in georgia they say if everybody's like great very good it's just weird to me. If everybody was looking at me like, so what do you call this place? I would be like, oh, it's Dave Town, obviously. I'm surprised the egos didn't get involved more and people just didn't like. It's so weird to name things after just the place you are from and just like well here's another one i think it had to do with like charters and junk like i don't know yeah like i learned i learned new york is

named that because a big patron of the english takeover of the dutch colony was james the duke of york like it's not related to it resembling york and england at all it's like a reference to the noble title of a guy who was considered helpful no it's all silly yeah yeah the worcestershire sauce isn't like better in worcester is it it's not like it's not like certain like scotches and stuff that you get like made only in certain areas oh there's not like something special right if i go to if I go to Worcester, England, are they going to like blow me away with their Worcestershire sauce, you think?

That's a very interesting question. The short version is that it's not more amazing, but it will be way different. Okay. Last number brings us into the first takeaway. The last number is 1837. That is the year when chemists John Whealy Lee and William Perrins began selling their Lee and Perrins Worcestershire sauce. And the BBC says the exact origin is a

mystery, even though they have an official story. But the story brings us into takeaway number one. There is one main brand of Worcestershire sauce, but it's made two totally different ways in the UK and the US. Oh. Like, same name, same brand, and this brand kind of invented it, but the version in the US is different from what the rest of the world consumes. Wait, in the US is different? Wait, in the U.S. is different? Yeah, there's a U.S. one, and then there's basically two main factories, and the U.K. one covers the U.K. and all of the rest of the world,

and then there's a U.S. factory that covers just the U.S., and the U.S. consumes more Worcestershire sauce than the whole rest of the world combined. Wow. It's really surprising to me, especially having first had it today. Yeah, and now I really want to see what the rest of the world is enjoying. What if it's way better? It might be. I'm literally Googling it now to see if I can have some shipped. Oh.

Because I want to know. And part of the good news is you'll be able to tell what kind it is. I sent you guys some pictures in advance, but we'll have them linked for people. The bottles are different is one of the differences. The UK one that's famous in the rest of the world, it's like an orange and black label, and it's just a label. The one in the US is a huge beige bag around the bottle. Yep. is a huge beige bag around the bottle that is apparently because they wanted to like protect it when they started shipping it to the U S when there was no

U S factory. And it has just stayed that way, even though there's a U S factory now. Okay. Yeah. That's the bottle I'm familiar with or most when it, you know, seeing it in the store and on the shelf,

et cetera. Yeah. Like a paper bag. Like it's like, it's alcohol kind of like a shelf, et cetera. Yeah, like a paper bag. Like it's alcohol, kind of. Yeah, like a brown bag in it. Yeah, exactly. Can't let anybody know that I'm back on the sauce, literally. Sugar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, yeah.

Sorry, this is a deviation. We don't have brown sauce here, right? Yeah, we don't really. And we'll talk about that later, HP brown sauce. And this is sort of a brown colored sauce that has some similarities to brown sauce. But British people will be shouting at their phones if we start saying Worcestershire sauce is brown sauce. Because it's different for them, yeah. Right.

Do we have less sauces in the u.s and if so that's a problem right we need to address that we need to start making uh some strategic maneuvers to grab vital sauce interests secure our sauce interests worldwide right you think if any country would have sauce superiority it would be the u.s we we just right we love our food uh but that that just surprises me that it feels like we have less sauces like they have all of our sauces and then they have the extra stuff we need to start annexing some sauces yeah or at least just get some brown sauce. That's what the annexation comes in, Dave.

Right. What about like, first we conquer the ranch that ranch dressing comes from, but then we're conquering countries, right? Like we're conquering France, we're conquering Russia. Sure, yeah. Send the Marines into the Thousand Islands, you know. Exactly. There's a thousand of them, Alex.

We're going to need a lot of Marines, yeah? Yeah. We're going to need a lot of Marines. Yeah. We're going to need a lot of Marines. We're going to need a fighting force the likes of which the modern world has never seen. So I don't want to alarm anybody. I was just Googling brown sauce to see if I could have some. There's a brand called Daddy's Brown Sauce, which is the worst sounding. Don't buy that one.

Yeah. Daddy's favorite brown sauce. That is the worst branding I've ever heard in my life. That's just whiskey. Yeah. That's either a vile condiment or like the hottest liquor right now. You know, like that's a child describing whiskey wow yeah the brown makes dad yell sauce right everybody google daddy's brown sauce i'm sure

it'll be fine do not buy that dave buy that dave yeah get get one with the houses of parliament on it if you can like an hp brown sauce that would be better i think uh if whose house does daddy's brown sauce have on it if not the houses of parliament this is the houses of my neighbors on the cul-de-sacs people around i took some pictures just people i just houses in the neighborhood because the because also the the worcestershire sauce official origin story here is that two guys made it and the limited amount of cooking sauces or reducing things down i've done really makes your entire space smell like what you're doing so whoever this daddy is i'm sure the whole neighborhood can smell what house it is boy oh boy they just assume it's a meth lab

and he's ashamed of the sauce he's like yes a meth lab right that is what i do walks in wearing the suit like walter white Walter White, but brown sauce. Breaking brown. Yeah. Breaking brown. We're on to something here. And Gus is literally just the manager of a chicken restaurant that wants the brown sauce for himself. That's perfect.

Still blows himself up the same way, though. Yeah, of course. Trying to make us own brown sauce. Oh, man. AMC, if you're listening, you know, like, let's do this. Hector digging the little bell for more sauce.

I'm out of sauce. i'm out of sauce i'm out of sauce oh my god uh well so what are we talking about we will we will talk about hp brown sauce in the next takeaway but this one worcestershire, there's like an official origin story around one company. It's a little bit like how Kraft's Heinz, really just Heinz now made ketchup such a thing in the world. Lee and Perrins created the name Worcestershire Sauce and the idea that the official origin story is that somebody else named Lord Sandus was a British noble and he was the governor of Bengal, which is now a part of India and Bangladesh. He was the governor of that for the British East India Company doing colonial stuff in the 1800s. And then he ate delicious fish sauces there. And then he came back to England with a rough version of the recipe and said, hey, Lee and Perrins, like, make me this. I miss the sauce

and the first attempt apparently tasted bad and then they just left it laying around for a few years and it fermented and then they were like oh yeah that's us and tried it again and loved it that's the official origin story of worcestershire sauce from the company bold adventurers and I do not buy it why on earth would you make a sauce be like ew this tastes bad forget about it for years and then come back like let me taste it again now that it's aged five years in the dark yeah this horrible sauce I didn't like I mean I I think they're back in the day I think a lot of food was invented out of boredom or desperation, right? It's mostly the second thing. Yeah.

Like, I think about stuff like cheese, where it's like, why would you taste that? Desperation. Lobsters, snails, rabbits, insects, anything fermented. It's all just like, I got to eat something. Right. insects anything fermented it's all just like i gotta eat something right it's probably just like look if if this kills me then that also solves the problem so exactly either way it's bottoms up let's let's eat this this this sauce that went bad and see if it's actually good i like the stuff that's like more like a like a challenge like pineapples or like um like uh coconut like yeah like anything like or uh man i'm trying to think of like a spiked animal people

don't really eat urchin uh no kufu or fugu whatever it's called oh yeah yeah where it's just like you look at something that is just covered in spikes you're like i bet that's delicious why else would it yeah like that why else would it be so protective? What's it hiding? Yeah, I want it. Maybe there's treasure inside. Yeah. I mean, imagine discovering like a clam and then being like, okay,

I guess I need to cut open other animals. There might be treasure in other animals. Right. Yeah. You never know. Like, can I chowder a porcupine too? You know, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Seems hard. I bet you could. Yeah. animals right yeah you never know like can i chowder a porcupine too you know maybe yeah seems hard bet you could yeah seems hard but so did the clam seemed like a literal rock

yeah and it had a little little pearl inside who would have thought like it's right it's like food and a treasure exactly why are clams the only things that have little treasures? Can you imagine the first person that opened up a clam, found clam food and a pearl? Yeah. Then you start like opening up squirrels and stuff and you're like, ah, darn, nothing.

It must've, it must've been like the person who discovered math. Like you're like the universe suddenly makes sense to me now. Yeah. So yeah. All these things have food and treasure in them but i gotta say i'm like i would have joked that worcestershire sure worcestershire sauce was like yeah something that went bad like that's that is what it i don't know i don't know how else you would discover it

without like a mistake because it is it's actual like fermentation is involved in making it for real like they have they have there's a great discovery channel video will link where you see like tubs of anchovies they have fermenting in the factory and so like it's it's part of the actual process but right the people first making it according to this story it's very amateur it's english people guessing at at indian and bangladeshi cuisine like after the facts after a long sea voyage where you haven't had it for a while and checks out yeah so it's it's like whether or not this story is true the tamarind paste in particular people think that points to like a like an indian cuisine origin of this idea. Right. Makes sense. Yeah.

It was definitely a mistake. Like imagine calling this shot. Imagine being like, fellas, here's what I'm about to do. I'm going to mix all this together and I'm going to let it go bad and it's going to be delicious. I just know it. I wonder if they were trying to recreate

some kind of curry sauce or something. Yeah. Yeah, like it could be a curry thing. And then main, main ingredients here, vinegar, obviously, and then tamarind paste, molasses, garlic, onions and anchovies. Almost all Worcestershire sauces, unless they're going way out of their way to be vegetarian or vegan, have anchovies in them. And so this also reminds me and other people of fish sauce like if you get red boat brand fish sauce that's an east asian sauce that's just salt and anchovies and it's this like kind of tang but but again it's the worcestershire sauce it's

more parts than that and a little different yeah they do have like vegan available online and stuff like that oh yeah you'd know being a vegetarian. Yeah, there's options. There's options out there. I also don't care that much as a vegetarian. I'm a vegetarian, but every now and then someone's like, I think there might be meat in that gravy. And it's like, well, I'm already eating it, so we'll see what happens to my stomach.

You're not the type of person that like doesn't eat caesar dressing well yes yes and no it's got caesars in it yeah you shouldn't eat that yeah it's filled with caesars got tiny tiny rulers in it they grind them up yeah i'm not just roman caesars there's also like yeah caesar romano yeah just people named caesar yeah And also, also with this sauce origin story, it might be false. Like, I couldn't really find sources outside of this company to back it up. And then Mental Floss cites writer Brian Keough, who wrote a book called The Secret Sauce, A History of Lee and Perrins. And he says that the Sandus noble line left Worcester 38 years before the story would have happened. And also that none of them went to India or were governor of Bengal.

I also can't find people backing him up. So it might be true, might not be true. But either way, two chemists in Worcester start making like India and East Asia influence sauce in the 1830s. It's really funny to me that it's chemists. Yeah. And not, you know, like a chef. Chemists. Yeah. But again.

What were you trying to make? Yeah. They're trying to make like fuel. I was about to say they were trying to make like an accelerant and they made Worcestershire sauce. And they're like, well, this is fine, too, I guess. I guess we can eat this. Yeah. Yeah.

Like that is totally plausible, especially inventing this elaborate exotic story of a lord visiting India. Like it would make sense if it was covering up. We tried to make motor oil and are not good at it. That would make sense like oppenheimer inventing a new water heater or something like all right i was trying to make a nuke but i mean this is fine too i guess we're just trying to see if you can make fuel out of food and no you can't you really can't yeah well and then and then the, at some point they decided to make it very differently in the U.S., probably for U.S. palates. One big difference is the vinegar, U.K. versus U.S. U.K. version and then the rest of the world, it's made with malt vinegar.

U.S. is made with distilled white vinegar. And so there's a taste difference. And that also means one of them is gluten free. Distilled white vinegar U.S. version is gluten free, but malt vinegar has gluten in it. And so sometimes the U.S. version will like proudly say gluten free because that's just how it works the way we do it. Right. Right. It's yeah. You might as well throw gluten free on there. I mean, it never wasn't that, but it's like, yeah, but ours says it.

Get a little bit of that extra extra juice on it yeah yeah because that vaguely reads as good even though it's just a difference yeah for some people's diet so it's like oh well how how uh how conscious of of uh worcestershire sauce like yeah to go out of their way, yeah. It's like, it would be like it calling itself dolphin safe. Right. Well, it's true. Although I wouldn't be, like, going through the ingredients, I wouldn't have been surprised if it was like, now dolphin safe. Now dolphin safe.

It was like, wait, what? Like, if someone told me, oh, yeah, there's totally dolphins in this sauce i'd be like yeah i guess i can taste the dolphin a little yeah you're right yeah like like they're like okay we knew we needed anchovies we were really confused about what an anchovy is so early on we were catching what we thought were huge anchovies uh that know how to do tricks turns out dolphins sorry uh sorry about that we get like four bottles out of this dolphin i think it's an anchovy and must be like the queen anchovy and then we already talked about the packaging but different vinegar in the u.s and then also

maybe the biggest difference is the ratios of some ingredients. The Spruce Seats says U.S. Worcestershire sauce. The U.S. version has three times as much sugar and three times as much sodium as the U.K. version. So ours is like leaded. Ours is like a party. It's pretty cool. That checks out. That feels like obligatory. Ours is thickening yeah yeah that's like it feels like they brought it to the u.s and they're like well you know the rules like

you gotta add all the sugar and it's like but it doesn't change the taste at all doesn't matter doesn't matter it's required it's like some trade agreement that every u.s food item has to be altered so that it slows your heart rate down it's right there written agreement every u.s food item has to be altered so that it slows your heart rate down it's right there written on the statue of liberty you gotta do it yeah and like little lettering under the other stuff it's just a little engraving of homer simpson making bart butter his bacon like yeah just come on you know my heart but and again this is this is one very dominant company of this one food with this one name. Discovery Channel says Lee & Perrins produces 26 million bottles a year in the UK that also get shipped all over the world.

But then they produce 27 million bottles a year in New Jersey just for the US. That is so crazy. i would never have guessed that yeah like the u.s loves it and also there are like just these two entire different versions of one incredibly specific sauce from one company and that's that's the whole topic we're talking about that's it it's so weird because it's not like it's not like a ubiquitous condiment in the united states at least doesn't seem like it because when you go to a restaurant it's ketchup ketchup and mustard on the table it's never worcestershire sauce on the table right yeah and if it's a meat place then it's steak sauce yeah yeah like specifically like

ask for worcestershire and they bring you a bottle out of the back or something. Yeah, if they have it. If they've got it, yeah. Yeah. You've got to bring your own. Yeah, you've got a little holster for it right next to your cell phone. And so it's all made in New Jersey and not... It's clipped to your belt. It's not made in Worcester, Massachusetts?

That wouldn't be appropriate, yeah. It would be appropriate. It is. One real part of the origin story of this is it is from worcester england like that that is it's not like they just slapped that name on it because it's sexy branding but it's actually from london or something like they did start it there that's for real yeah what why is it worcestershire is that just because it's british and much like us adding sugar, they're like,

well, you gotta add a shire on there. It's England. Man. Weren't you listening to the podcast you're on? Barely. Alex explained that. It's the name of the county that it's in. Oh, I missed that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but it's like and it's sort of like Oklahoma

City, Oklahoma. Like it's the county and the city kind of have the same name. But yeah, sure is an old timey county in England. Yeah. It's sort of like Hampshire. Hampshire is a county. Oh, OK. And then we have New Hampshire next to where you grew up.

Right, right, right, right, right. Thanks, everybody. But they could have just called it Worcestershire Sauce. I guess Worcestershire sauce felt correct. Because it's from both the town of Worcester and the place Worcestershire. Yeah. I've never said that word this much ever. It's really...

They wanted to get that extra syllable in there. Yeah, I guess so. And then they knew it was going to confuse the hell out of everybody. So people are calling it Worchestershire. I was afraid of that. Like, yeah, that's a word that, like, strikes fear into a kid's heart. You see that word, you're like, that might as well be French. Yeah.

I'm not ever going to attempt saying whatever that is. See, I had an advantage. Yeah? Yeah, even growing up saying Worcester all the time, you add a sure on that and it screws me all sorts of up like just that alone it like i'm having trouble saying it and it's like that's weird yeah it's worcestershire like you just it's unnatural yeah it's like the opposite of the noises we make and it's like a dog trying to talk like it's like it's not a sound we're used to

making yeah and and with like alienating experiences like like everyone listening to this podcast half or more of them are thinking of one sauce experience with this topic and the other group are thinking of the other sauce experience like i i didn't know it was divided like this until researching it's so weird yeah to me i'm gonna need to get the other sauce experience like i i didn't know it was divided like this until researching it's so weird yeah to me i'm gonna need to get the other sauce and see what i like better yeah orange and black label the the brit kind yeah and as i understand it's the canadian kind and like just outside the u.s so we're like like we're like weirdly insular we're like we're like the north korea of food we're like like we're being told i was about to say dave are we weirdly insular or are we insular by like design the rest of the world makes fun of us about constantly right yes this is true i do love

that the rest of the world is just lapping up a completely different version of Worcestershire sauce. And I can't help but to think it's the better version, right? It has to be. Yeah. Because when I tried it, it felt like a relatively thin sauce to me. Like it's flavorful, but there's not that much body to it. And so if the other kind has way less sugar, way less sodium, different. But like I wonder if it maybe malt vinegar is thicker.

I don't know. It would feel very substantial to me without all that. I don't think it's going to be that much thicker, to be honest. But I do like thickening it. Like there are recipes where you get to thicken it and it does make it more delicious often. Because, yeah, it feels like something that would be like a thick dip that you'd put like a chicken wing in or something yeah uh but it's a drizzle like it's all fluid and i don't know when to use it like you saying sausages i'm like oh i'm gonna get some veggie

sausages now and i'm just gonna drizzle it like it's more of like it's always just been sitting there and i'm like i use it as a in recipes but like on its own i just don't like what do i do put it on a sandwich what do i do with you you know it drives me nuts so now now i have a little more and i like i don't eat meat so like it makes sense why and now it makes so much more sense yeah so thank you well and uh especially in the bonus we'll talk about another surprising use of it off of that we are going to a short break Yeah. So thank you. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. JV Club with Janet Varney is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. But speaking of like thin versus thick brown sauces, we can get into the other main takeaway for the main episode. Takeaway number two.

for the main episode. Takeaway number two. Worcestershire sauce is just one player in a battle of brown-colored British sauces that reaches all the way up to Parliament. Yeah. There's a few different stories. I knew this thing went deep. I knew it did.

All the way to the top. Yeah, in Britain, and the first story is HP brown sauce that we were talking about before but there's an entire condiment category kind of created by this one brand of a much thicker brown sauce condiment every time you say hp brown sauce i'm picturing like weird fiction starring brown condiments i was gonna say it sounds like a monty python character or something it's uh yeah he's the lovecraft of condiments hb brown songs he's just on a throne with a little plate of food like yeah yeah he being fulu how do you say it

that's who i was thinking of The tentacle monster on the throne. Yeah, you know. Cthulhu. Yeah, yeah. There we go. Ooh, I would eat Cthulhu with some brown sauce. His little face, perfect for Worcestershire sauce. Yeah.

Seafood, yeah. It's got that fish connection. They share fish lineage. Yeah. Cthulhu and worcestershire sauce both weird words to say yeah both words that look like the black speech of mordor yeah someone should make a brand right it's like lee and cthulhu like they team up

and now i think of it worcestershire sauce tastes love crafty like that it does it tastes like otherworldly it's like you're soaked in that when you step through a portal into the dimension yeah exactly it's drenched in worcestershire sauce yeah i'm so tangy that's your last words that's ever heard on this plane. And yeah, these other sauces we'll talk about, they are distinct from Worcestershire sauce, but H.P. Brown sauce, often just called brown sauce. It's a funny name. And if listeners have eaten in the UK, they've probably experienced it.

It's often on just tables there. And according to Mental Floss, it was first sold in the 1890s by Nottingham grocer, Frederick Gibson Garten. So near Worcester, Nottingham. And he named it HP because that stands for the Houses of Parliament, because he heard that somebody running a restaurant inside of the British Parliament was a huge fan of the sauce and giving it to everybody. And so that's where the name comes from. When I first saw it, I just thought it was like, it had Parliament on it because it's British,

but it's a specific branding thing that Parliament likes it. I was going to say, that whole story was just a litany of British things. It's very British. What's British about Frederick Gibson garten of nottingham i don't hear it frederick gibson garten of nottingham putting an hp at the beginning of his sauce because it's the houses of parliament why not yeah it's a little much and then giving a sauce a man's name hp brown sauce at your service the adventures of hp brown sauce oh yeah i will say the brown sauce brown itself is very lazy though it's as lazy as us naming our new england cities like it it's like

they just later like this is the brown sauce and's like, there are so many other brown sauces, but okay. Yeah. This is, this is the official flavor of brown. Same, same people that named the orange. Yeah.

Yeah. It was down to orange or tart ball. Yeah. I like tart ball. Actually. That's fun. Tart ball. Yeah. Tart ball.

Very close. It was very close. Yeah. And, and. Tart ball, yeah. Tart ball. Very close. It was very close. Yeah. And yeah, I feel like there's sort of a barrier to entry for eating brown sauce because you don't know what it tastes like from the name. But the ingredients include molasses and tamarind and malt vinegar. So it's sort of like Worcestershire sauce. And Worcestershire sauce is similar in that its name is indecipherable.

Like it's no indication of what it is or what its intended use is. Yeah. It could be literally anything. Yeah. And it's partly named this because it's just so ubiquitous in the UK. It kind of created its own field and the guardian says as of 2010 the hp brand held a 71 market share in the uk for brown sauce a thing they kind of invented as a thing and so then you have all these other different brown colored sauces including stuff like worcestershire sauce that

was invented before it that are different but competing you, they're all trying to be the tangy, vinegary sauce of British food. Yeah. I mean, there could be only one, right? Yeah. Stiff competition, as they say. Yeah. And one quick story here is I learned that one of these former brown sauces in the UK was A1. Oh!

It turns out mash.com, even though I think it's a U S steak sauce, mash.com says A1 was invented in Britain by one of the managers of an international exhibition at Hyde park in London in 1862. But by the 1970s, it had just been out competed by other various types of brown sauce, including HP brown sauce. And so, except for a few Tesco grocery stores, you can't really find it in the UK anymore. But every American dad is excited to have it at steakhouses. It's pretty common here for that purpose.

I'm not sure if you know this, but it's when steak is done. Right, that's true. That's how you know. You reach for the A1. So a1 and brown sauce very similar yeah i think a1 is like runnier but it's there's this like brown sauce is definitely thicker i feel like fans of each of these sauces would be upset if i said they're all the same it's just that they're like kind of in different. A1's pretty similar to Worcestershire sauce to me. Like it's a runny meat sauce that's brown. And there are other brownish sauces you could use instead.

This is all vaguely one family of things. Right. It's like different gradients of the same. Yeah. I need to mix them all together and make the ultimate sauce. You do need to do that. Yeah. Right now while I watch. I mean, I need to do that yeah right now while i watch

i mean i need to get a soda machine i don't have any a1 yeah yeah yeah and i drink a tall glass that's of the ultimate sauce a double gulp of ultimate sauce yeah oh i want it so bad now it's like it says gulp on the on the cup but it's like a really wiggly unnerving gulp like like like the i'm afraid gulp meaning right right a gulp of an apprehensive gulp your kidneys just immediately shut down the second it hits your lips. The entire system is just like, uh-uh. Nope. That is coming back up. And the last, last story for this takeaway,

this is another brown-colored sauce that also involves the British Parliament. This is a sauce called Henderson's Relish. Had either of you heard of this sauce? I had not. No. No. And Americans, if you're thinking of like green hot dog relish, it is not that.

Alan Newman covered this for Gastropsy. Henderson's Relish is a different sauce from the town of Sheffield, England. They started making it in 1885. The ingredients include tamarind and garlic and vinegar. The bottle has an orange and black label, very similar to UK Lee and Perrin's labels. Like, in a lot of ways, this is very similar to Worcestershire sauce. But people in Sheffield will get really mad at you if you say that, apparently. They have like an intense local pride in their different vinegary brown colored sauce called henderson's relish that is i mean i'm gonna have this as well now i want to try it yeah i'm very curious yeah i want to try it and they're it's uh it's a sort of thing i i don't know i honestly don't know if i'll be able to tell the difference of these right like how could you possibly? But maybe they are.

Maybe they're noticeably different. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt where they're like, no, it's not the same. But it really, it all just, yeah. It all really seems like the same. The same labeling, too. Yeah. It feels the same. It's even a man's name.

Yeah. Henderson. All the same. It's even a man's name. Yeah. Henderson. All the labeling, by the way, because it's orange and black, the labeling on all of these. But it should be noted that they also look about 100 years old. Like the labels look like something you'd find in your grandfather's attic. Yeah. That's about right. They definitely have not changed their labels in two centuries yeah yeah yeah why would they they put in the orders and they're like man we

ordered a lot of labels stick with what works yeah yeah they're still working through their original stock yeah like that i did too i mean it took off but we thought it was because it like they're still make it's still like did did... It's a very successful sauce. I don't know. But they ordered way too much. It's really popular, but... Yeah. No, it's going to be like a car.

Everyone's going to have one. What's a car? I don't know. Yeah. But everyone's going to have it. People are going to go through one a day? One a day, right? In the future, this will replace oxygen.

So we need a lot of labels we need to start teaching ourselves to aspirate this now so so that's why we're selling so many bottles we're gonna move so much inventory like so i need sorry now i need to know how the word relish gets involved because relish of course means to like enjoy. Um, but we have now have two different relishes and like it, I thought I knew what that word meant in terms of food, but now I'm wondering like,

is there like an official desk like definition or is it like, did we have the word relish? Like I enjoyed it. Someone made relish and they're like you know what i'm gonna call it relish because everybody will love it right it's like a celebration in the mouth yeah i couldn't which i do not think relish is but because i couldn't like find an explanation and my guess is it's just a 1880s version of what the word relish means and like that was also applied to the garden stuff people put on chicago hot dogs you know that's the best i can figure yeah because it's very it's

very different from what americans think of as relish and maybe the rest of the uk this seems like a really sheffield thing shout out sheffield in south yorkshire sheffield and then the parliament How about Sheffield in South Yorkshire? Sheffield! And then the Parliament part of this. My Sheffy's set! And then this went up to Parliament in modern times. Because, again, this is sort of like Worcestershire sauce, but they feel dwarfed by it, apparently. Like the locals think it's always being mistaken for it and compared to it unfavorably. Then there was a 2014 incident that the British Parliament had, and then the papers in Britain nicknamed it HendoGate, because the nickname for the sauce is

Hendo's. So HendoGate. There was a debate in Parliament over a bill concerning intellectual property law. And an MP for the london borough of lewisham named jim dowd told a story in the debate about it he said he went to his pub asked for worcestershire sauce and was shocked to receive a different black and orange labeled bottle of brown sauce he said quote it was something from Sheffield from someone called Henderson's, whoever they are, end quote. And went on to describe it as like, he doesn't know for sure, but it seems like these guys ripped off Lee and Perrins and we need better IP laws to prevent that kind of thing.

And Sheffield freaked out. Oh, wow. So this guy was at a pub. They served him this. He was like, what is this what the heck is this he got he got probably very belligerent uh and then he was like you know what taking this all the way to the top like you know do you know who i am you don't know who i am i'm making this a whole thing yeah like that's what it feels like right is just like one pub really messed up uh in

explaining it to this guy that is brand confusion in action yes in his defense it is someone mistaking a product for another product because their labels are identical right and in this case it's like what is he mad about because in this case it sounds's like, what is he mad about? Because in this case, it sounds like, forgive me. Sounds like he ruined his meal. That's what he's mad about. Yeah. Well, it sounds like they're close to the same. They're not the same.

Yeah. Apparently the main flavor difference is cloves are in Henderson's relish. That's weird. That's apparently how you can tell. But they are otherwise pretty similar. And I assume you could just plow through. But he had just never had it, never heard of it, didn't want to try it on his food. He just wanted the thing he wanted.

Right. Which I understand. Like at a restaurant, like, you know, like as a vegetarian, when I ask for a veggie burger, there's no guarantee that I'm going to get anything. I might get a black bean burger i might get one of those ghastly things where they pack it full of like carrots and vegetables or you might get like an impossible burger like i get it which is like when you ask for like you shouldn't have to have that with sauce too where it's like if you ask for ketchup and they give you something that isn't ketchup it's like well this is weird right like i wanted ketchup and they give you something that isn't ketchup it's like well this is weird right like

i wanted ketchup and they're like well this is the same i mean we call it something entirely different and it has a different label but it's ketchup and it's like but it's not it's literally not so i can see i can see the problem i guess yeah wow now that you'd say that, I'm thinking about how some people react to Hunt's brand ketchup. Right. It's fully tomato ketchup, but they're like, it's not Heinz. What's wrong? What's going on here? Right.

It's fine. It's still ketchup. Yeah. With this, it's weird because it's like, can I get some Worcestershire sauce? And they're like, here you go. Relish. And it's like, okay, does it taste like Worcestershire sauce? And they're like, a little. Kindish. And it's like, okay, does it taste like Worcestershire sauce? And they're like, a little, kind of.

And it's like, okay, so could I get the Worcestershire sauce, please? And they're like, yeah, here it is, the relish. And it's like, have I lost my mind? Like, I can see why that's confusing. Right, I can see why he didn't try it. And then after he told this story, basically every member of parliament from Sheffield made hay out of it and made a whole thing out of it to like make their constituents happy. And also at the time, one of the MPs from Sheffield was a guy named Nick Clegg, who was the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party and the deputy prime minister of the whole United Kingdom. And so he wrote like a national open letter demanding respect for

henderson's relish and this london mp had to apologize and then he also accepted an offer from a sheffield mp to like have a meal with the guy and try it with henderson's and give it a shot so hendogate was resolved here's the i mean i know the real reason behind all this right is like this seems silly but remember when that senator ate a burger on TV in the U.S.? Because there was like the thing of like, they're not going to take away our burgers. People suggested like maybe eat less meat. That guy, he was representing an area that their economy was around meat. So it's like that.

I get it where it's like who else is gonna do this like it's embarrassing it's still incredibly silly it is but it's like someone has to represent these people that's their job so this this guy has to go on tv like a like a jerk and eat a burger like yeah burgers and it's like i don't know that i guess that's technically his job and it's the same with this is like yeah the people representing this relish it's like look I don't know, I guess that's technically his job. And it's the same with this. It's like, yeah, the people representing this relish, it's like, look, that's a whole economy there. I can't sit here and listen to you bash our precious relish. So yeah, we're going to have a few words about this.

Yeah, that's exactly right. It's my job. It's literally my job to represent this area it is yeah american politics has so many equivalents of this for sure yeah we're every single regional thing we'll do this we have of course yeah we have a lot more insidious versions of this too yeah this is their drilling for oil yeah pretty much and i and i love that like we have been talking about how worcestershire sauce feels so niche and feels so specific and kind of lower profile lower tier among the sauces and then there's one below it that like it feels like it's this goliath that's oppressing it you know i love that there's all these tears to it oh yeah it's it well it's like it's like the record store guy like oh you think that's

an indie band yeah whatever you think oh you think that sauce real sauce he pulls a sauce yeah bottle of henderson's relish from behind the uh counter yeah this is This is the real stuff. Is there six inch demo sauce? I mean, I'm not going to lie. During this podcast, I quickly ordered some of this Anderson relish. Really? Because it's just like, yeah, I want to try it. Awesome. I want to drink it.

I want to, yeah. Okay. I'm going to ask you how it is and I'll post on social what you said. This is very exciting. I mean, I'm guessing I'll just be like, yeah, it's like Worcestershire sauce, and I'm going to piss off a region of England. But it's just like, I don't know. I'm probably, my palate isn't sophisticated enough to tell the difference. So, I mean, we'll see. Maybe it'll change my life.

Maybe you'll never hear from me again yeah it's like poison out of existence yeah yeah it transports you to the hp brown sauce universe folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks to david christopher bell and tom ryman for inventing tv shows with me bringing 13 colonies wisdom into this just so many great ways these guys are great guests anyway Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the popularity of Worcestershire sauce as a cooking tool for eating cicadas. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show,

for a library of more than seven dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Worcestershire sauce with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, there's one main brand of Worcestershire sauce, and it's made two totally different ways in the UK and the US. Takeaway number two, Worcestershire sauce is just one player in a battle of brown-colored British sauces that reaches all the way up to Parliament. Plus tons of numbers, stats, and other stories, everything from pronunciation and geography to A1 and hendos. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests.

They're great. David Christopher Bell and Tom Ryman are the two heads of a fantastic podcast network and streaming channel. It's called Gamefully Unemployed. It's one of my favorite internet things. You can also find Tom Ryman's excellent videos at the Weird History YouTube channel from Ranker. Also writing over at 1-900-HOT-DOG. David Bell is the head writer of the YouTube news and comedy show Some More News. Also has wonderful film scripts.

Many, many links await you about these two great guys. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. Citing an amazing video from the Discovery Channel all about Worcestershire sauce production citing the BBC and Mental Floss and a few other sources for you know, the past and present of this sauce also Bon Appetit, Mash.com

The Spruce Eats and other culinary sites find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun and beyond all that our theme music isbroken, unshaven by the Budos band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week

with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.