Lea and Perrin's Sauce.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 42, 22 March 1884, Page 6

Lea and Perrin's Sauce.

Although inferior in money-making power to a mint, sauce, too, can make the guineas roll briskly in, and notobly has this been the ca&o >\ith Lea and Perrin's Worcestershire. A scrutiny of the label will show that it i& prepared "from the receipt of a nobleman in the country." The nobleman is Lord Sandys, and Messrs Lea and Perrin's connection with the sauce came about rather curiously. Many years ago, Mrs Grey, author of " The Gambler's Wife" and other novels, avcll known in their day, was on a vibit to Omber&ley court, when Lady Sandys chanced to remark that she wished she could eet some very good curry - powder ; which elicited from Mrs Grey that she had in her desk an excellent recipe, which her uncle, Sir Charles, Chief Justice of India, had brought thence and given her. Lady Sandys said that there were some clever chymists in Worcester, who perhaps might be able to make up the powder ; at all events, when they drove in after luncheon they would see. Messrs Lea and Perrins looked at the receipt, doubted if they could procure all the ingredients, but said they would do their best, and in due time forwarded a packet of the powder. Subsequently the happy thought struck some one in the business that the powder might, in solution, make a good sauce. The experiment was made, and by degrees the thing took amazingly. All the world, to its remotest ends, now knows of Worcestershire sauce as an article of commerce ; and, notwithstanding that, in common with most good thinys, it is terribly pirated, an enormous tradi I s done in it. The profits, 1 am told, amount 10 thousands of pounds a year, and I cannot but suppose that liberal cheques, bearing the signature of Lea and Perrins, have passed from that firm to Mrs Grey, to whom it is so heavily indebted for its prosperity.