Taste test: house brand Worcestershire sauce

Taste test: house brand Worcestershire sauce.

The Lea & Perrins brand is synonymous with Worcestershire sauce, right? But what if a supermarket house brand is just as good at a fraction of the price? Time for a house brand Worcestershire sauce taste test!

According to Wikipedia, Lea & Perrins were real people who invented the stuff in the early 19^th Century in (are we surprised?) Worcestershire in the UK. Their marketing claimed at various times that the recipe came from a nobleman in the country and an ex-governor in India, both without justification. Possibly true: the first barrel of the stuff was tasted, found unpalatable, and forgotten in a basement for a year after which aging it was delicious.

U.S. shoppers may feel it’s worth a premium to get the kraft paper wrapping on L&P Worcestershire sauce. But in the UK and Canada the sauce is sold commando: no wrapping at all. CC photo credit: Qurren.

To our palate, L&P has a sweet-sour profile with the accent on the sour, due to the presence of tart tamarind puree as a key component. We find it an indispensable ingredient at Burnt My Fingers and use it injudiciously in hamburgers, cocktail sauce, oyster shooters, Caesar salad and of course bloody Marys. We’re close to the bottom of the 15 oz bottle purchased not that long ago and it would cost us $5.75 ($12.25/qt) to replace it at our local supermarket, Hannaford, whereas a 10 oz bottle of their house brand is $1.09 ($3.49/qt). Great Value brand at Walmart is even less at 99¢. We can probably dig deep in our pocket and pay a few dollars extra for a product we replace once every year or two, but still…

Our first tasting was a two way comparison out of the bottle of L&P vs Hannaford. They tasted surprisingly similar but L&P had an element of sweetness that the Hannaford lacked. Going back and forth, we decided we could do without it.

We then prepared a three way blind tasting of L&P, Hannaford and Great Value. Our three tasters were instructed to re-taste after the initial impression in a different order. On the first round Hannaford was considered to be too vinegary and Great Value very clove-y with L&P providing the best balance. But wait! When we doubled back all three liked Hannaford best, with the vinegary-ness resolved to a richer and more complex taste. Great Choice isn’t bad but compared to the others it finished out of the running.

Perhaps modern day food chemists decided nobody is guzzling straight Worcestershire and it would be better to cut to the chase, i.e. the essence of what people buy it for. We’re in! And we’ll use our $4.16 savings (normalized for product volume) to buy a couple heads of romaine for Caesar salad.

Hannaford, L&P and Great Value lined up for our blind tasting. Notice that Great Value is a little lighter in color than the others.