Product type | Brown sauce |
---|---|
Owner | Kraft Heinz (2005–pres.) |
Produced by | Heinz |
Country | England |
Introduced | 1895[1] |
Markets | Europe, Canada |
Previous owners | |
Website | hpsauce.co.uk |
HP Sauce is an English brown sauce [2] the main ingredients of which are tomatoes and tamarind extract. It was named after London's Houses of Parliament. After making its first appearance on British dinner tables in the late 19th century, HP Sauce went on to become an icon of British culture. [3] It was the best-selling brand of brown sauce in the UK in 2005, with 73.8% of the retail market. [4] The sauce was originally produced in the United Kingdom, but is now made by Heinz in the Netherlands.
HP Sauce has a tomato base, blended with malt vinegar and spirit vinegar, sugars (molasses, glucose-fructose syrup, sugar), dates, cornflour, rye flour, salt, spices and tamarind. [5] It is used as a condiment with hot and cold savoury food, and as an ingredient in soups and stews.
The picture on the front of the bottle is a selection of London landmarks including Elizabeth Tower, the Palace of Westminster, and Westminster Bridge.
Frederick Gibson Garton had a grocers and provisions shop on Milton Street, in Nottingham. He was given a recipe for a brown sauce, by one of his suppliers, that had been obtained in India.[ citation needed ] He used this recipe for the brown sauce in his pickles and sauce factory in New Basford. This was located at the rear of his home in Sandon Street. Its ingredients included vinegar, water, tomato puree, garlic, tamarind, ground mace, cloves and ginger, shallots, cayenne pepper, raisins, soy, flour and salt. Garton registered the name H.P. Sauce in 1895, choosing it because he had heard a rumour that a restaurant in the Houses of Parliament had begun serving it. The sauce bottle labels carried a picture of the Houses of Parliament. This was by no means his only product. He also made Nottingham Sauce, Sandon Sauce, Worcester Sauce, Banquet Sauce, Yorkshire Sauce and Daddies Favourite Sauce, as well as Garton & Co's Indian Chutney.[ citation needed ]
In 1899 he was unable to settle a debt with his vinegar suppliers, the Midland Vinegar Company of Aston Cross, Birmingham. Edwin Samson Moore of the vinegar company visited his Nottingham premises to settle the matter. The outcome was that Garton handed over the name and recipe for HP Sauce - for just £150. [6] He also had to agree to keep out of the Sauce and Pickles business. The name of GARTON remained on the bottles of HP sauce for many years afterwards but it was The Midland Vinegar Company who profited from the huge sales that were generated. Today HP and Daddies are the two most popular national brands of brown sauce. They can both trace their origins to a tiny premises in Sandon Street, Basford, Nottinghamshire.[ citation needed ]
For many years[ vague ] the bottle labels have carried a picture of the Houses of Parliament. [6]
In the United Kingdom, HP Sauce became informally known as "Wilson's gravy" in the 1960s and 1970s, after Mary Wilson, the wife of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, gave an interview to The Sunday Times , in which she said: "If Harold has a fault, it is that he will drown everything with HP Sauce." [7]
The brand passed from the Midlands Vinegar Company [3] to Smedley HP Foods Limited, which was subsequently acquired by a division of Imperial Tobacco, before being sold to the French Groupe Danone SA in 1988 for £199 million. [8]
In June 2005, Heinz purchased the parent company, HP Foods, from Danone. [9] In October of that year the United Kingdom Office of Fair Trading referred the takeover to the Competition Commission, [10] which approved the £440 million acquisition in April 2006. [11]
In May 2006, Heinz announced plans to switch production of HP Sauce from Aston in Birmingham to its European sauces facility in Elst, Netherlands, only weeks after HP launched a campaign to "Save the Proper British Cafe". The announcement prompted a call to boycott Heinz products. The move, resulting in the loss of approximately 125 jobs at the Aston factory, was criticised by politicians and union officials, especially as the owner still wanted to use the image of the House of Commons on its bottles. In the same month, local Labour MP Khalid Mahmood brandished a bottle of HP Sauce during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons as part of a protest against the Heinz move. He also made reference to the sauce's popularity with the former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. These plans were confirmed on 23 August 2006 [12] and the factory at Aston ceased production on 16 March 2007. [13] A week later a "wake" was held at the location of the factory. [14]
The factory was demolished in the summer of 2007. [15]
The six-acre Aston site was purchased by developer Chancerygate in 2007 at £800,000 per acre; they subsequently sold it for half that price and it now houses a distribution warehouse for East End Foods. [16]
HP Sauce is available in a range of formats and sizes, including the iconic 9 oz/255 g glass bottle, plastic squeeze bottle, and TopDown bottle.
The H. J. Heinz Company is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures a couple thousand food products in plants on six continents, and markets these products in more than 200 countries and territories. The company claims to have 150 number-one or number-two brands worldwide. Heinz ranked first in ketchup in the US with a market share in excess of 50%; the Ore-Ida label held 46% of the frozen potato sector in 2003.
Worcestershire sauce or Worcester sauce is a fermented liquid condiment invented by the pharmacists John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins in the city of Worcester in Worcestershire, England, during the first half of the 19th century. The inventors went on to form the company Lea & Perrins.
Ketchup or catsup is a table condiment with a sweet and sour flavor. The unmodified term ("ketchup") now typically refers to tomato ketchup, although early recipes for various different varieties of ketchup contained mushrooms, oysters, mussels, egg whites, grapes or walnuts, among other ingredients.
A chutney is a spread typically associated with cuisines of the Indian subcontinent. Chutneys are made in a wide variety of forms, such as a tomato relish, a ground peanut garnish, yogurt or curd, cucumber, spicy coconut, spicy onion or mint dipping sauce.
Tamarind is a leguminous tree bearing edible fruit that is indigenous to tropical Africa and naturalized in Asia. The genus Tamarindus is monotypic, meaning that it contains only this species. It belongs to the family Fabaceae.
HP Foods Limited, formerly based in Birmingham, England was best known as the producer of HP, Lea & Perrins, and Daddies sauce brands. It was also the UK licensee, from Heinz, of Chinese food and condiment brand Amoy Food.
Branston is an English food brand best known for the original Branston Pickle, a sweet pickle first made in 1922 in the village of Branston near Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire by Crosse & Blackwell. The Branston factory proved to be uneconomical, and production was moved to Crosse & Blackwell subsidiary, E Lazenby & Sons in Bermondsey, London, where it invested in new buildings in 1924 and 1926, which remained in use until 1969.
Daddies is a brand of ketchup and brown sauce in the United Kingdom.
Salad cream is a creamy, pale yellow condiment based on an emulsion of about 25–50 percent oil in water, emulsified by egg yolk and acidulated by spirit vinegar. It is somewhat similar in composition to mayonnaise, but mayonnaise is made with oil as its main constituent whereas salad cream is based on vinegar and water. Both salad cream and mayonnaise usually include other ingredients such as sugar, mustard, salt, thickener, spices, flavouring and colouring. The first ready-made commercial product was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1914, where it is used as a salad dressing and a sandwich spread.
Lea & Perrins (L&P) is a United Kingdom-based subsidiary of Kraft Heinz, originating in Worcester, England where it continues to operate. It is best known as the manufacturer of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, a condiment first invented and sold in 1837 by chemists John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins from Broad Street, Worcester.
Henderson's Relish is a condiment produced in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. It is similar in appearance to Worcestershire sauce, but contains no anchovies. It is made of water, sugar and spirit vinegar with a selection of spices and colouring. It is gluten free, suitable for vegans and is approved by the Vegetarian Society.
Barbecue sauce is a sauce used as a marinade, basting, condiment, or topping for meat cooked in the barbecue cooking style, including pork, beef, and chicken. It is a ubiquitous condiment in the Southern United States and is used on many other foods as well.
Philippine adobo is a popular Filipino dish and cooking process in Philippine cuisine. In its base form, meat, seafood, or vegetables are first browned in oil, and then marinated and simmered in vinegar, salt and/or soy sauce, and garlic. It has occasionally been considered the unofficial national dish in the Philippines.
Mustard is a condiment made from the seeds of a mustard plant.
Huy Fong's sriracha sauce, also referred to as sriracha, cock sauce or rooster sauce due to the rooster on its label, is a brand of sriracha, a chili sauce that originated in Thailand. The sauce is produced by Huy Fong Foods, a California manufacturer, and was created in 1980 by David Tran, a Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant to the US from Vietnam.
Brown sauce is a condiment commonly served with food in the United Kingdom and Ireland, normally dark brown in colour. The taste is either tart or sweet with a peppery taste similar to that of Worcestershire sauce.
Chef Brown Sauce is a brown sauce established by the company "Chef" in the middle of the 20th century, after the brown sauce market had receded somewhat due to the lifting of certain ketchup production restrictions, but nonetheless managed to gain a foothold in the market. The ingredients include; Vinegar, Sugar, Apples, Barley Malt Vinegar, Water, Tomatoes, Modified Maize Starch, Oranges, Salt, Spices, and Colour: Caramel (E150D). The sauce is gluten free.
Mushroom ketchup is a style of ketchup that is prepared with mushrooms as its primary ingredient. Originally, ketchup in the United Kingdom was prepared with mushrooms as a primary ingredient, instead of tomato, the main ingredient in most modern preparations of ketchup. Historical preparations involved packing whole mushrooms into containers with salt. It is used as a condiment and may be used as an ingredient in the preparation of other sauces and other condiments. Several brands of mushroom ketchup were produced and marketed in the United Kingdom, some of which were exported to the United States, and some are still manufactured as a commercial product.
Burmese fritters are traditional fritters consisting of vegetables or seafood that have been battered and deep-fried. Assorted fritters are called a-kyaw-sone. Burmese fritters are generally savory, and often use beans and pulses, similar to South Asian vada.
Curry, a spicy South Asian-derived dish, is a popular meal in the United Kingdom. Curry recipes have been printed in Britain since 1747, when Hannah Glasse gave a recipe for a chicken curry. In the 19th century, many more recipes appeared in the popular cookbooks of the time. Curries in Britain are widely described using Indian terms, such as korma for a mild sauce with almond and coconut, Madras for a hot, slightly sour sauce, and pasanda for a mild sauce with cream and coconut milk. One type of curry, chicken tikka masala, was created in India, but has become widespread enough to be described as the national dish of the United Kingdom.