Brown Sauce

[SepticTone]

Just noticed your index definition of brown sauce, chris, & it's lamentable, frankly.

The UK's most popular brand of brown sauce is HP sauce. The HP standing for Houses of Parliament. It has a picture of them on the label to prove the point.

Sad to say, I have a hot bacon butty & bottle of HP before me, & the ingredients are, in descending order of contents, & I quote from the label:

Malt vinegar (from Barley)
Tomatoes
Molasses
Spirit vinegar
Glucose-fructose syrup
Dates
Sugar
Salt
Modified maize starch
Rye flour
Tamarind
Spices
Onion extract

And it has the Royal Seal of Approval. So the Royal Family have it on their bacon butties.

All other brown sauces simply don't taste as good.

It must be used in Extremely Small Measures on your bacon butties, English breakfast (never on burgers, as it's too strong), unlike tomato ketchup, as it's extremely pungent, concentrated & tangy, in a brown sort of way.

I once recommended HP brown sauce as an addition to a fry-up English breakfast to a Canadian lady of my cyber acquaintance, so she found some in Toronto.

I forgot to mention that you should just put a little bit on the side of your plate, so she poured a whole bottle over her kids' breakfast fry-ups.

She wasn't best pleased, but I think the kids liked it, as they got a day off school as a result of tamarind palate-overload.

it's also good with shepherds pie, corned beef hash, sometimes with chips if you've a strong constitution, pies, & Heinz baked beans.

But in small quantities.

My bacon butty has gone cold now, so I'll get the wife to microwave it for me & add a Small Amount of HP sauce to it.

[davec]

I am tantalized beyond sensible reason! I am pretty sure that I will be able to procure a bottle of this God-approved condiment to accompany manna from heaven, bacon, black pudding, or any basic meal that needs a good kick in the jacksie. I believe I can get it at a my local Trader Joe's or World Market store, and shall strive to procure it at peril of my life. Honestly. Sounds like a world-class can't-pass-up Bloody Good Deal, as it's formulated so that a little dab'll do ya. I will try it.

Wait a minute.. Do you swear you're not an HP marketing shill???

[SepticTone]

I swear. There's another good brand of brown sauce called 'Daddies', which is equally good but very slightly different.

HP sauce is good now & again, but because it's such an old working class product, produced to make cheap unappetising food taste nicer it was looked down upon by middle & upper class people a coupla decades ago as a bit vulgar.

Its origin, again, stems from the Empire, when the British ruled India, so colonial administrators & the like developed a taste for tamarind, molasses, curry, spices, etc., & brought that taste back home. A bit like Lea & Perrins sauce, which was an accidental concoction, I know, but the principle is the same.

Incidentally, I just googled this:

http://www.brownsauce.org/faq/

Which just about covers it. Except it's written by a Canadian, where they advocate using HP as a basting sauce or marinade for roast meat or steaks!! Disgusting! This site, btw, makes the Septics Companion look perfectly normal & mainstream.... Videos about HP sauce???

This one's good, though:

http://www.brownsauce.org/more-lashings ... -sandwich/

As the foxy slim girl back from foreign lands, having lived on crap foreign food for months only wants a big fat greasy bacon butty slathered in HP to reassert her Britishness. We can identify with that,

Brownsauce.org?? FFs, how do people have so much time on their hands nowadays???

[davec]

<<Brownsauce.org?? FFs, how do people have so much time on their hands nowadays???>>


Adding up everything you've said so far, I'm surprised you've not twigged it.

Obviously, a site run by toffs trying to scare up a little 'street cred' (it's the rage among these types worldwide don't-cher-know), to liven up conversation at their do's, which would otherwise be enough to bore the paint job off a lawn gnome. 'Course, I could be just plain wrong.

I can't back-engineer 'FFs'. Canucks say 'for fuck's sake'. Is that it?

[SepticTone]

Yes.

[davec]

My local Treasure Island supermarket has HP - both steak sauce and fruity! Knew I'd snag it somewhere. Now to nip over there in an off moment...

[SepticTone]

HP Steak sauce?

I wouldn't put it on a steak: it's supposed to be cheap stuff to enliven a cheap & cheerful tasteless meal, like baked beans on toast or a bacon sandwich, or cheap suasages & chips n egg, kinda thing.

The fruity version is probably best to start with, as it's a bit more, umm, fruity & sweet. It's also very nice, but better with sausages.

I know you yanks get much better, bigger, more tasty steaks than we do over here, unless we choose to pay extra, which we won't as we're skinflints, but I wouldn't adulterate a good steak with HP sauce.

I wish I'd never mentioned it now.

[davec]

Hmmm... OK, I'll just put the regular HP in my instant coffee.

Actually, these days, having just bought another house in bad economic times, my business partner and I are cooking as if a full scale depression were on - rice and beans, pasta, and lots of chicken (which I don't mind), and no restaurant meals. HP could be good on rice and beans, maybe on a chicken sandwich too. Sausage is too expensive for now. I'll try 'em both.

[SepticTone]

I wouldn't put HP sauce in coffee if I were you, dave: this isn't going to taste good, so might be an idea if you have guests round whom you don't want to come again (Tip).

Yes, this recession is bad news, but probably good news also as people can revert to making their own cheap & wholesome meals at home. At least, unlike in a restaurant, you know what's gone into it, who's made it, how clean the kitchen is, & that the server hasn't gobbed in it prior to serving it to you.

'Sausages' are very cheap, as in 'bangers' type sausages like what we eat here.

'Sausage' suggests to me one of those fat stinky garlic & worm-laden raw things that foreigners hang off their ceilings for months then eat raw. For some reason, this stuff is expensive, yes.

EG: Sausages egg chips and beans, as per this typical British delicacy, just yearning for a dollop or two of HP:



as opposed to 'Sausage' as per this:



This, I know, is a typical Mallorcan 'Sausage' shop, as I've been in several. The evil rank smell in these places, believe me, is almost indescribable. But I think the lady's face says it all. Like 'Get me Out of Here!'

Incidentally, this is a good link ( no pun intended) to British sausages:

http://www.sausagelinks.co.uk/sausage_buying_guide.asp

Me & my family would never buy anything but British meat, as we're supporters of 'High Welfare' farm standards for animal rearing here, which are the highest in the world, as you know the animal has had as natural & stress-free life as it's possible to have, which makes for much tastier meat ( no chemicals, hormones, ability to roam about, etc.) Anyway, sermon over.

[davec]

Right then, I'll have to run up a brekkie for myself like the one you picture!! Looks splendid!!!

And if my arteries lock up on me, I'll do the American thing...


and sue ya.

Now, where can I snag real cook-yourself bangers around here??? Hopefully at that Treasure Island that has the HP.