How to pronounce Worcestershire Sauce

And little else

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How to pronounce Worcestershire Sauce

Screw it. Just grab the A1.

Straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

Worcestershire can be properly pronounced a few ways: "WUST-ter-shire, “WOOS-ter-sheer”, or “WOOS-ter-sher” sauce. But the easiest way to say Worcestershire Sauce is Lea & Perrins®

The story of Lea & Perrins® famous Worcestershire Sauce begins in the early 1800s, in the county of Worcester. Returning home from his travels in Bengal, Lord Sandys, a nobleman of the area, was eager to duplicate a recipe he’d acquired. On Lord Sandys’ request, two chemists—John Lea and William Perrins—made up the first batch of the sauce.

Lea and Perrins were not impressed with their initial results. The pair found the taste unpalatable, and simply left the jars in their cellar to gather dust. A few years later, they stumbled across them and decided to taste the contents again. To their delight, the aging process had turned it into a delicious, savory sauce.

Lea & Perrins

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I’ve heard this before, and always wondered who the loony was who said, “Gracious! It’s those barrels of rotten anchovies, raisins, and tamarind paste we left down here to rot! I’ve got a smashing idea, let’s open them up and eat them.”

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Of note is that the little mini-peppers you sometimes find growing inside a Bell Pepper are called “Perrins” and are used in this condiment.

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Luckily history is full of brave souls who had similar thoughts.

“Oh, a barrel of fish guts is oozing? I’m game!”

“Hey, this milk I’ve stored in a sheep’s stomach has gone all lumpy! Ooh, let’s try it!”

And to quote Swift, “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster”, although to be fair, at least oysters are literally packaged lumps of ready-to-eat protein.

Heroes, each and every one. There should be statues.

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I’ll try anything once. :wink:

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And, if the legend of natto’s origins is true:
“Hey, remember those soybeans I packed in straw and stuck under my saddle during our long ride? They rotted and got all funky and smell like feet and horse sweat! And they’re all gooey now! Holy crap we should totally eat them.”

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My Minnestotan upbringing requires each of these two words to have distinctly separate pronunciations, as well. Simply put, there is no “r” in “saw”.

Is required for liver & onions. And mushroom soup (aka Campbell’s Booger Soup). And Bloody Ceasars.

ETA: I use my mom’s pornuciation: What’s-this-hear sauce? Or What’s-that-there? sauce, depending on her current possession of, or relationship to, the bottle.

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From Berkeley (the OG one), Gloucestershire here myself (pronounced Bar-klee, Glos-ter-sheer), and can confirm that we’re all cider-addled.
Can’t confirm for the rest of my bumpkin chums, but I at the very least am far from aliterate :wink:

My accent is a bit of a double-edged sword. I find that when introducing myself to people or helping them over the phone, it acts as a somewhat soothing balm. But the flipside of this is that it’s because people can have a tendency to think my accent means I’m stupid.

Of course, this negative is heavily outweighed by the fact that every day is “talk-like-a-pirate-day” for me :smiley:

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Yup, Englishperson here, my family all call it “Wooster” sauce.
Like Jeeves’ gentleman, you know?

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Sauce please? Google produces no sign of “perrin” being used to refer to these…

It is in fact a total lie, but one believed by a kitchen assistant for 6 months, so well done you.

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Fush ‘n’ chups anyone?

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I believed it too immediately upon reading it, and I remarked with some joy to my colleague.
Then my better instincts kicked in, which is a shame because it’s a great story.

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And it goes a lot further back, of course. The ‘loony’ gene persists. As hominids spread out of Africa across the planet there were many such loonies who said “hey - we’ve never been here before and there’s these totally weird berries/fruit/nuts over there - let’s eat some and see who dies”**

** actual words may have been different; the alternative of starvation may have been a motivating factor

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Shout out to those who died so that we could have a safe lunch.
Never should have eaten that bee, dude, but thanks for the honey.

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Someday I’m going to try making this:

Tweak it with some anchovies, and it’ll be close, I think.

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