Worcestershire sauce

Worcestershire sauce (ⁱ/ˈwʊstərʃər/), sometimes shortened to Worcester sauce (/ˈwʊstər/), is a fermented liquid condiment of complex mixture, of British origin from Worcester, and popularised by Lea & Perrins. The essential ingredients are barley malt vinegar, spirit vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind extract, onions, and garlic; particular brands add other spices as well to taste. It is often an ingredient in Welsh rarebit, Caesar salad, Oysters Kirkpatrick, and sometimes added to chili con carne, beef stew, hamburgers, and other beef dishes. Worcestershire sauce is also used to flavour cocktails such as a Bloody Mary or Caesar. Known as salsa inglesa (English sauce) in Spanish, it is also an ingredient in michelada, the Mexican beer cocktail.

History

A fermented fish sauce called garum was a staple of Greco-Roman cuisine and of the Mediterranean economy of the Roman Empire, as the first-century encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder writes in his Historia Naturalis and the fourth/fifth-century Roman culinary text Apicius includes garum in its recipes. The use of similar fermented anchovy sauces in Europe can be traced back to the 17th century. The Lea & Perrins brand was commercialised in 1837 and has continued to be the leading global brand of Worcestershire sauce.

Worcestershire

Worcestershire (ⁱ/ˈwʊstəʃə/ WUUS-tə-shə or /ˈwʊstəʃɪər/ WUUS-tər-sheer; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. Between 1974 and 1998, it was merged with the neighbouring county of Herefordshire as Hereford and Worcester.

The cathedral city of Worcester is the largest settlement and administrative seat in England. Towns in the county include, Redditch, Bromsgrove, Stourport-on-Severn, Droitwich, Evesham, Kidderminster, and Malvern. The north-east of Worcestershire includes part of the industrial West Midlands; the rest of the county is largely rural. The county is divided into six administrive districts: Worcester, Redditch, Wychavon, Malvern Hills, Wyre Forest, and Bromsgrove.

Location

The county borders Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands, Warwickshire, and Gloucestershire. To the west, the county is bordered by the Malvern Hills and the spa town of Malvern. The southern part of the county is bordered by Gloucestershire and the northern edge of the Cotswolds; to the east is Warwickshire. There are two major rivers flowing through the county, the Severn and the Avon.