Worcestershire Sauce, 1876 (Published 2009) (2024)

Of all the processed foods found in the grocery store, condiments are one category that remains (mostly) unassailed by the food police. Such terrific things as chow-chow (a vegetable pickle), Tabasco, ketchup and Colman’s mustard have all been around for more than a century, and their continued success and ingredient lists that you can pronounce may have earned them a bit of leniency. Condiments lie somewhere between sauce and seasoning, and they are made to be a preserve — often with some kind of vinegar and plenty of salt — so a batch can be cooked up and kept around for a long time.

One classic condiment, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, was originally devised in Worcester, England, and was used to complement meat dishes and add a little zing to Welsh rarebit. The sauce was fermented and contains malt vinegar, spirit vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind extract, onions, garlic and spices.

The story goes that Worcestershire sauce was created by accident: a customer came into Lea & Perrins’s apothecary, requested the condiment be prepared and then apparently never returned for it. A few years later, as the remains of the old mixture were about to be tossed from the storeroom, a daring clerk tasted it and — eureka!

Lea & Perrins’s American version leaves out the malt vinegar and, of course, substitutes high-fructose corn syrup for the sugar. But in 1876, The Times ran a recipe for Worcestershire sauce that’s much different but just as delicious as both commercial versions: it’s sharper, more peppery, looser and contains no tamarind or molasses.

It’s also a snap to make. You discover that the mysteriously dark, drippy sauce you’ve been dousing on burgers and stirring into Caesar salad dressing and Chex mix your whole life (not to mention shaking into the bloody marys of weekend-morning adulthood) can actually be made in less than 10 minutes.

Although created by accident, Worcestershire sauce belongs to a long line of fermented condiments. Gary Allen, the author of “The Herbalist in the Kitchen,” wrote in an e-mail message that “it’s related to the Malay kecap” — which became ketchup in Western cookery — “the fish sauces of Thailand and Vietnam and the liquamen of ancient Rome.” All of these sauces, he noted, contain an ingredient that sounds horrid: fermented fish. But fermented fish contain glutamates, and glutamates are what produce the sensation of umami, or savoriness (or, rather, the imprecise but happy feeling you get from certain foods). And this may also explain their continued popularity.

But as this column is about taking old recipes and giving them a modern twist in the hands of a chef, it was time to see if we could create a new condiment with the potential to retain its popularity for centuries. I called Barbara Lynch, the owner of Boston’s No. 9 Park and the Butcher Shop (among other restaurants) and the author of the coming cookbook “Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian Tradition” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

The old Worcestershire sauce immediately reminded her of a sauce for steak tartare in her condiment repertory. She doesn’t like the tang in Tabasco but wanted something that would complement the flavor of raw beef and make the dish special. So she reduces tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and crushed red peppers to a syrup. Tomatoes contain glutamates. Again: umami.

Lynch called on her kitchen staff, who organized a condiment face-off. One group of cooks blended Scotch and Cynar (an Italian artichoke liqueur) as the foundation of a condiment; another made a condiment of roasted garlic, shallots, juniper, allspice, mustard, soy and sherry vinegar that was big on texture but not quite right.

The winner was a sauce that combined elements of Lynch’s modern tomato syrup — vinegar and chili powder — with elements of old-school Worcestershire: fish sauce and umami. You caramelize shallots in some oil before adding the tomatoes, fish sauce, vinegar, chili powder and spices, then you let the mixture sit — until it cools, not a few years — before swirling in some honey. In the sauce, which Lynch calls Worcestershire, you get sweetness, heat, acidity and a whopping double dose of umami. I think she should bottle it.