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Worcestershire Sauce
Dissolve three ounces of sugar in one pint of vinegar over the fire, then take it off and mix in two tablespoonfuls each of Indian soy and walnut catsup, one-half tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of cayenne pepper, one nutmeg cut in thin slices, twelve cloves, one-half tablespoonful of ground ginger, three or four cloves of garlic and a small piece of lemon peel. Turn all the ingredients into a wide-mouthed bottle and let it stand for a month, shaking it well every day. Strain off the sauce into smaller bottles and keep them tightly corked till required.
A cold-infused imitation of the bottled sauce, built on two Victorian pantry staples that no longer sit on most shelves. Nothing here is cooked but the sugar syrup; the month of steeping does the work.
- Indian soyNineteenth-century English for soy sauce imported from the East; it was generally darker and saltier than modern Japanese brands, though composition varied. A dark Chinese soy sauce is a reasonable match; a light or low-sodium one will give a thinner, paler result.
- Walnut catsupA near-black condiment of green walnuts salted and fermented, then spiced with vinegar; many period recipes also include anchovy. It is still made commercially in Britain but is not a supermarket item, and there is no clean substitute — mushroom ketchup is the usual stand-in and gives a different, earthier sauce.
- What is missingNo anchovy and no tamarind, both of which are in commercial Worcestershire. If the walnut catsup was made with anchovy it would supply some of that savour, and the soy supplies more, but the result sits closer to a spiced sweet vinegar than to the bottled sauce.
- MeasuresThree ounces of sugar is by weight, roughly a scant half cup of granulated. A pint here is 16 fl oz. One whole nutmeg sliced thin is a great deal of nutmeg for a pint — taste before assuming the proportion suits you.
- The vesselGlass or glazed stoneware only; the vinegar will pit metal and take on the taste. A wide mouth matters because whole spices and garlic cloves have to go in and the whole lot has to be shaken.
- The daily shakeThe spices settle as sediment and shaking redistributes them, which is why the recipe asks for it every day through the month.
- StrainingStrain through muslin or a coffee filter rather than a sieve; cayenne and ground ginger pass straight through mesh and the sauce will keep throwing sludge in the bottle.
- Keeping and yieldMakes a little under a pint after straining. The acidity and salt keep it well in tightly corked bottles, though refrigeration after straining holds the aroma far longer than a cupboard will.
Worcestershire sauce takes its name from the city of Worcester, where the chemists John Lea and William Perrins began selling their fermented anchovy-and-tamarind sauce in the late 1830s; the tale of a returning colonial official handing them an Indian recipe is traditional rather than documented. Once the bottled sauce became a fixture, cookbooks on both sides of the Atlantic filled up with domestic imitations like this one, which belong less to Lea and Perrins than to the older English family of "store sauces" — walnut, mushroom, anchovy, cavice — that households kept in the cellar to sharpen gravies and cold meat. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, was compiling in the 1890s for a readership that still expected a cook to bottle her own condiments, and the reliance on Indian soy and walnut catsup shows how much of the Victorian larder came ready-fermented from a shop even when the final sauce was made at home.