Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here it's that brown sauce with a ni unpronounceable name. It looks on paper like war kester Shire. It's a tangy, tasty addition to red meats, soups, and pretty much anything that needs braizing. And according to the company that originally created it, Lee and Parents, it can be pronounced Worcestershire, Woostershire or wooster sheer. Wooster shear.
Sauce is used to make good things even better because it packs a lot of savor nous is sometimes called umami. The word umami, by the way, was coined in the first decade of the nineteen hundreds as a way of marketing the then newly isolated flavor compound monosodium glutamate or MSG. But back to the sauce. We spoke by email with
Shamous Mullen, chef at the Institute of Culinary Education. He said, in recent years there's been a newfound interest in umami for the fifth taste after salty, sweet, bitter, and sour, often described as deliciousness, the umami brings out the natural flavorings and food makes steak taste, more steaky mushrooms, more shrewmy Worcester shear sauce is made up of a lot of flavorful ingredients, including anchovies, and that's right, it's not
generally vegan plus red onion, molasses, garlic, tamarind and malt and or cider vinegar. Mullen said. The vinegar and tamarind bring a punchy ascidity to the sauce, and the molasses an onion balance out the sweetness. But the true magic happens during the lengthy fermentation process, which takes eighteen to
twenty four months. This last and most critical step was something of a happy accident when, supposedly in the early eighteen hundreds, two chemists based in Wooster, England, John Lee and William Parents, were charged with duplicating a recipe that one British nobleman or an other had enjoyed in Bengal. Their first effort was an utter failure, however, and the chemists left it to languish in jars and their seller.
A few years later, they rediscovered the batch and were thrilled to realize that fermentation had turned it into the perfect savory sauce. They started selling it in eighteen thirty seven. It came to the US in eighteen thirty nine and is sold in over seventy five countries today. When that original Leon Parents product was shipped overseas, its glass bottles often broke as a result of rough waters, so the
company began wrapping the individual bottles in paper. The tradition continues today more as a way to distinguish the brand, rather than a need to keep the product whole. The company lost the copyright to the name in eighteen seventy six. While the Lion Parents recipe remains a closely guarded secret, many competitors have sprung up to make similar versions. The
BBC counted at least thirty others in Worcester alone. You can even try making it yourself at home, Mullen said, while the aging and fermenting process might be a bit much. To undertake it home, you can make a very tasty approximation of oyster sheer sauce by simmering soy sauce, mustard powder, malt, vinegar, tamarind paste, garlic, anchovy paste, tomato paste, ginger molasses, and spices.
Those spices, he said, can include coriander seed, mustard seed and clove, as well as orange peel and black pepper. He explained that you simply mix all the ingredients and simmer to sauce consistency, then strain and store the liquid. There are lots of recipes online, including several for those of us who have been playing around with home fermentation, and of course, the beloved sauce isn't relegated to steaks
in such either. It can be added to pretty much anything that needs singing, be it a bloody mary fondue, cheese sauce, eggs, popcorn potatoes, salad dressing, or a grilled cheese sandwich. Lee and Parents even recommends a splash of it in place of your normal dashes of salt and pepper.
The continuing enthusiasm over Ummmy Flavor is carrying over into the Worst of Shire market, and this recent uptick is expected to continue projected through at least Mulin explained O Mommy hounds have been on the hunt for heritage condiments, likely in Paren's original recipe, and there's an ever increasing trend towards finding new applications for the sauce, from marinades to cocktails, most to shear sauce is having a moment. Today's episode was written by Aliya Hoyt and produced by
Tyler Klang. For more in this and lots of other savory topics, visit has to Works dot Com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.