The new Duke and Duchess of Sussex flaunting English Lea & Perrins Sauce at the wedding.
We may have won the Revolution, and the War of 1812, but the English have been invading the U.S. in a very discreet but powerful way since 1839. And New York Business man John Duncan, is the Benedict Arnold responsible for this secret mutiny. He’s the man who first started importing a brown sauce made by English Chemists John Lea and William Perrins, originally for a retired English Lord, who governed India.
We’ve avoided calling our cookies “biscuits’, we’ve avoided calling cakes “Puddings”, and you won’t find mushy peas on very many U.S. menus, nor will you find Americans eating Marmite with breakfast. But the English have succeeded in getting us addicted to their ubiquitous brown Worchesteshire sauce. They’ve secretly plotted to have it put in nearly every American dish from soup to stew. It’s in some of our most beloved American cocktails and dishes. It’s in our Bloody Mary – even though invented in Paris, its name was changed from the Red Snapper in the U.S. It’s in the deviled egg, which shows up at summer picnics and family events across the country. It’s in our most American of barbeque sauces. It’s even – God forbid – in Cincinnati chili!! How could the Macedonians allowed for this English travesty!
So now that the British have brexited out of the European Union, they force another union on us with the marriage of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. OH yeah, we should all be SOOO happy that one of our most beautiful actresses has been taken out of commission now to be the Real Housewife of England’s Ginger Prince. She is no longer allowed to offer an American hug, eat shellfish, or play the Game of Monopoly! How un-American is that? If the Royal couple visits New Orleans, she won’t be allowed to participate in a crawfish boil. If they visit Maryland – Megan can’t indulge in a crab cake. If they visit Gulf Shores or Florida, they can’t even taste shrimp. But she could have a Bloody Mary, or barbeque ribs, because of the English ‘brown poison’ that’s in their formulae.
The British have been laughing behind our backs for centuries. I mean what is even the correct pronunciation of the evil brown sauce? They named it after one of the longest cities in Britain, and don’t even pronounce all the letters in its name! What the heck happened to the “chest” in the middle? And, they’ve certainly been confusing us with their fussy table settings. What American knows the difference between a shrimp fork and an oyster fork?
They’re even trying to endear us to their culture by forcing their TV shows on us, like Shameless and the Great British Baking Show. Paul Hollywood thinks he’s so suave with his baking prowess.
They’ve even done something terribly sinister with the American version of Lee & Perrins – they removed the Malt vinegar, replacing it with distilled white vinegar, and put three times the amount of sugar and salt in our version to clog our arteries and raise our blood pressure. Although the Lee & Perrins brand has been owned by American Heinz since 2005, I bet if you peel the onion layers far enough you’ll find a connection to British nobility.
On 21 May 2009 Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh visited the Heinz Beanz factory in Kitt Green near Wigan to mark the 50th Anniversary of the official opening of the factory. The Queen also opened a new packing operation.
But now that Megan’s signed the register, the English can now say, “Oh you think you’re SOO American with your Barbecue sauce made with our English Worchestershire.” It’s almost as if they’ve been laying the groundwork for having their now Duke and Duchess of Sussex live in the U.S., which they’re rumored to be considering. We can’t really stage a “Worchexit”, removing all English Worchestershire from our beloved American foods. It’s really too late for that. The English probably even colluded with the Japanese to create the current buzz around Umami – the new fifth taste in addition to sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Now that all brown fish sauces like Worchestershire are associated with Umami, our celebrity chefs won’t allow for it to be let go. Umami is all they can talk about on Chopped and America’s Next Top Chef.
And how fussy are the list of ingredients in Worchestershire? It has two types of vinegar – malt and spirit, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, onions, garlic, tamarind, cloves, and probably lemon, pickles, pepper and soy (there’s the Japanese collusion right there!).
Ok I admit, I do have English ancestry on my mother’s side, but we don’t talk about it much. My Grandfather’s ancestors came from a coastal part of Suffolk, called Horsey-next-the-sea, which even is the origin of another English sauce I’m addicted to, Horsey sauce. So what is an American to do to ? Can we agree to rename Worchestershire something more American like Liberty Brown and stop this British invasion right here?