Brown sauce….
It is hardly the most evocative of names, is it? And yet, it is an indelible part of the British psyche. Supermarkets up and down the land have shelves groaning with the stuff, and every self-respecting roadside caff or pub offers its illegitimate offspring in those impossible-to-open little sachets.
It is, when you really think about it, an extraordinary concoction. Only a nation that viewed food as an extension of mechanical engineering could have invented such a thing. You can clean silver with it. It is a silent culinary assassin. And—most baffling of all—it contains tamarinds.
Its taste is cacophonous, a sledgehammer assault on the palate—more evocative of the foundry than the kitchen. Unless you were inoculated with it at an early and impressionable age, you will not eat it twice. And the colour? That sort of brown which makes you say, “If you ever buy me a tie that colour, I will sleep with your sister.”
And yet—it is delicious.
The Rolls-Royce of brown sauces is HP. The brand accounts for nearly three-quarters of the UK’s brown sauce market and is, curiously, also the most popular in Canada. In America, the equivalent is A1 Steak Sauce—named with all the specificity and subtlety of a meat cleaver—and dolloped almost entirely on beef.
It’s almost shocking how good HP Sauce is. From its lowbrow reputation and unappetising hue bursts a remarkable aroma—complex, fuggy, and fruity. Like swimming through compost and Jif. It tastes even better than it smells: a sweet-sour, dominating blend that grabs you by the uvula and demands submission.
The recipe—“made from oriental fruits and spices”—harks back to Victorian times and is attributed to one Frederick Gibson Garton of Nottingham. His fruity brown goo was long produced in Aston, Birmingham. So why, then, does this Midlands concoction feature the London skyline on its label?
Well, HP stands for Houses of Parliament—hence the illustration. But why name a sauce after Westminster’s legislative HQ?
There is no single, agreed-upon origin story. Heinz, current owner of the brand, says HP has been “adding oomph to your favourite dishes since 1903.” But Garton had been tinkering with the stuff years earlier—some say as far back as the 1870s, though the name was registered in 1895. At some point around the turn of the century, the sauce allegedly found its way into a restaurant near Parliament. Sensing an opportunity, Garton rebranded the bottle with the famous abbreviation and illustration.
To further bolster its respectability, Garton secured a testimonial from one Dr. Bostock Hill, whose kindly, authoritative endorsement (“of a pleasant and piquant flavour… a thoroughly good sauce”) appeared alongside Big Ben on every bottle.
Other theories abound. Some claim it was the invention of one Harry Palmer, who sold it as Harry Palmer’s Famous Epsom Sauce. Palmer, a man perhaps more enthusiastic on the racecourse than in business, found himself in debt and sold the recipe to Garton. Garton, spotting a brilliant marketing opportunity, kept the initials but devised the Houses of Parliament backstory.
Garton had a flair for marketing. When he launched the sauce nationally, he toured the country distributing free miniature bottles from tiny covered wagons pulled by Shetland ponies and donkeys. He had originally considered zebras, but training them proved problematic.
The sauce caught on quickly. HP’s major rival, the rather unfortunately named Daddies, began production in 1904. By 1940, brown sauce was so well known that Betjeman could write in his poem Lake District:
“I pledge her in non-alcoholic wine / And give the HP Sauce another shake.”
Harold Wilson, whose wife once revealed he would “drown everything in HP Sauce,” understood the sauce’s populist power. In truth, the PM preferred Worcestershire Sauce, but he knew a reputation for liking HP lent him working-man credibility. As the ever-sniffy Peregrine Worsthorne wrote in 1971:
“He manages to retain a little of the working-class-lad-made-good appeal… The HP Sauce style of leadership is a style, so long as it is abnormal.”
For much of the 20th century, the octagonal HP bottles were bedizened—a word that deserves more use—with French text extolling the sauce’s virtues:
“Cette sauce de premier choix possède les plus hautes qualités digestives… Elle est absolument pure, appétissante et délicieuse avec les viandes chaudes ou froides: POISSON, JAMBON, FROMAGE…”
This culinary cod-French lent it a certain je ne sais quoi. Apparently, it was a marketing trick to make the English feel cosmopolitan at the breakfast table. When the French label was removed in 1984, traditionalists were aghast. One particularly aggrieved Times reader wrote:
Sir,
Am I alone among your readers in deploring the loss of that much-loved and most piquant of French primers—the label on the HP Sauce bottle? If unfortunate circumstances decreed there was nothing else to read at the breakfast table, one could always turn to the HP Sauce bottle for a little French revision. It will be sadly missed.
Dr J. H. Hunter, Frampton-on-Severn, Gloucestershire
The HP Sauce fan page (of course one exists) celebrates two things: the simplicity of the dishes it accompanies, and the homesick devotion of expats. HP is one of the most Proustian of British foodstuffs—a gooey, vinegar-laced taste of home.
Today, HP remains a kitchen staple. Heinz estimates 28 million bottles are consumed each year. “If stacked on top of each other,” claims the website, “they would reach the same height as 6,189 Houses of Parliament.” An oddly precise comparison—yet pleasingly absurd.
Production may have shifted to the Netherlands in 1988, prompting howls of betrayal from loyal fans. As The Guardian sniped at the time:
“It is hard to know which country’s culinary identity has suffered the greater insult.”
Nevertheless, HP remains thoroughly, belligerently British. One former slogan declared it “The Official Sauce of Great Britain.” It is proof that this country does indeed appreciate flavour, and that culinary complexity is not confined to coriander-heavy faraway lands. HP is the only suitable accompaniment to one of Britain’s greatest inventions: the full English breakfast.
Try explaining the joy of the full English to an American and you’ll receive the same expression you might get if you tried to explain Primo Levi to an Eskimo.
Because the full English is not a meal. It is a pilgrimage. Catholics go to Lourdes, Hindus to the Ganges, Muslims to Mecca—
The English go to breakfast.
It has bugger all to do with hunger or even pleasure. It’s a sacrament. A litany of belonging.
And at the centre of that altar sits the bottle of HP.
Cue lusty cries of Huzzah!
Cry “God for Harry, England and Saint George!”