Talk:Worcestershire sauce/@comment-90.62.215.67-20110717160813

I have frequently made my own sauce of this kind but would like to comment on its history. I made a study of it when I worked in schools for a project for the pupils & read quite a few old texts that related to the subject of this type of sauce, that I know of. Worcester Sauce is the only surviving company producing sauces of this kind. This style of sauce is indigenous to England going back several hundred years. When I was a child they had one competitor that I remember. In the days of the UK in the 17th, 18th & 19th centuries there were endless recipes along these lines for flavoured vinegar sauces. Meat was often rank & of poor quality before refrigeration & had been kept for a long time & flavoured sauces jazzed it up or masked its flavour. For example, there was London cab rank sauce which was similar. It is easy to make yourself & at the dinner table for three guests I filled up a Lea & Perrins sauce with my own. No-one noticed the difference! Indeed one guest commented how much he liked Lea & Perrins sauce & helped himself to some more & another guest concurred with his opinion. The great cities of the UK got started in their modern crowded form say from the 1830's onwards & as the century went on people were less inclined to make their own sauces (as they had in the country) & bought them in, & the success of Lea & Perrins dates from the mid-century onwards. Yum!