British Table Sauces

[grisell]

Here are a few recipes for home-made British table sauces. They taste a lot better than the ones you buy in the store. I make these regularly. They will keep almost indefinitely - even in room temperature - and improve a lot with ageing so there is no need to make small batches (I have some Worcestersauce from 1999 and it's delicious now!). The recipes are slightly modified, originally from Henley's 20th Century Home & Workshop Formulas, Recipes and Processes, New York, 1913.


Worcestershire Sauce

Makes 1-1½ litre:

2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp black pepper
3 tbsp curry powder (of your favourite brand)
2 tbsp chili pepper (e.g. flakes)
60 g mustard seeds
30 g ginger root, bruised
30 g garlic, bruised
60 g shallots, bruised
60 g salt
240 g brown sugar (Demerara, Muscovado etc)
120 g tamarinds
6 anchovies (optional)
1 l high quality wine vinegar
½ l dry sherry
Black caramel colouring (optional)

Grind all the dry spices. Bring everything except the sherry and colouring to a boil and let simmer for one hour. Add sherry and let cool. Add black colouring if desired. Add more spices to taste (depending on the curry, I sometimes increase the amount of chili) Let stand in room temperature for two weeks. Strain and bottle. Let mature as long as you can wait (months or even years).


Table Sauce (HP Sauce)

Makes 2-3 litres

1 kg apples
240 g brown sugar (Demerara, Muscovado etc)
200 g tamarinds
200 g raisins
60 g onion, bruised
30 g ginger root, grated
30 g garlic, grated
60 g salt
2 tbsp chili pepper (e.g. flakes)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp mustard powder
1 tbsp curry powder (of your favourite brand)
1-2 l (see below) wine vinegar of good quality
200 ml dry sherry

Peel and core the apples. Cut them into pieces. Boil them in enough vinegar to cover; together with the sugar, tamarinds, raisins, onion, ginger, garlic, chili and salt. Let simmer until the apples are very soft. Remove any stones from the tamarinds. Strain but save the liquid. Run the pulp in a food processor, then pass through a sieve. Add one litre of the vinegar the apples were simmered in to the pulp together with the rest of the spices and bring to a boil. Add more spices to taste (depending on the curry, I sometimes increase the amount of chili). Add the sherry and let cool. Add more vinegar to give the sauce its desired consistency (just pourable).

[solaryellow]

What type of vinegar? Thanks!

[grisell]

I use white wine vinegar, not the cheapest but no fancy stuff. What is meant is wine vinegar (I edited the post), red or white. Not distilled, balsamic etc. (Although I suppose cider vinegar would go well with the apples in the HP recipe).

If you can find malt vinegar, I think that would be the best choice and closest to the original recipes.

[Vindii]

What is HP sauce?

[grisell]

It's a little like ketchup, I'd say, but spicier and based on apples instead of tomatoes. It's very popular in Great Britain and Scandinavia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Sauce

[grisell]

I read in the Wikipedia article that it's based on tomatoes. That might have changed during the last 100 years. I don't know. Now I'm getting uncertain. But actually, the recipe above tastes genuine IMO and I think it's delicious. Strange.

[kimgary]

André

Ingredients
Tomatoes , Malt Vinegar (from Barley) , Molasses , Glucose-Fructose Syrup , Spirit Vinegar , Sugar , Dates , Modified Cornflour , Salt , Rye Flour , Tamarind Concentrate , Spices , Flavourings
This is a brown sauce.

TRegards Gazza.

[solaryellow]

I use white wine vinegar, not the cheapest but no fancy stuff. What is meant is wine vinegar (I edited the post), red or white. Not distilled, balsamic etc. (Although I suppose cider vinegar would go well with the apples in the HP recipe).

If you can find malt vinegar, I think that would be the best choice and closest to the original recipes.

Thanks Andre! I appreciate it.

[kimgary]

André

Ingredients
Tomatoes (132g per 100g Ketchup) , Spirit Vinegar , Sugar , Salt , Spice & Herb Extracts (contain Celery) , Spice .

Red sauce

Regards Gazza.

[Snags]

What is HP sauce?

US version would be a steak sauce or barbecue sauce
not exactly the same but similar
HP is spicy sour and sweet.

[grisell]

Thanks, kimgary. Now, I may be completely wrong, but my guess is that apples were used in HP Sauce instead of tomatoes initially, because of the (probable) rarity of tomatoes in GB 100 years ago. The ingredient list has obviously been modidied since then. I doubt you'd find glucose-fructose syrup, modified cornflour and flavourings in the original recipe. The strange thing is that the home-made with apples tastes very similar to the tomato-based sauce.

[schlafsack]

Perhaps they use green tomatoes?

[Oregano]

[quote="grisell"]It's a little like ketchup, I'd say, but spicier and based on apples instead of tomatoes. It's very popular in Great Britain and Scandinavia.

How did you learn how to make these sauces?

I'm looking to try to make a curry table sauce, which is no longer produced. It contains water, oil, a small amount of tomato puree, cream and cornflour, and spices and fruit juice.
I'm assuming I want mustard in the spice mix to work as an emulsifier. The end result was yellow.

Do you have any advice for how to put it all together?

[jenny_haddow]

As it was a curry sauce, I would think the yellow colouring is from turmeric not mustard.

HTH

Jen

[Oregano]

I would think the yellow colouring is from turmeric not mustard.
Jen

I believe I need the mustard as emulsifier. There is mustard listed in the ingredients anyway. Every spice (about 10 of them) is listed individually, which is most useful!