Ancient Sauce? Mystery Sauce!
With with camera in hand, I headed back to the shop yesterday to investigate this mystery bottle of sauce. I walked straight to the isle I’d been to the day before, hoped no one was looking at me on the security cameras, or those HUGE round mirrors located in the upper reaches of each corner. I took out my camera and snapped a series of pictures of this “Pride of the World” mystery sauce.
With the deed done, I picked up a bottle and took it up to the front where the woman I’d spoken to the day before was pricing some items. “Ahh, you came back!” she said with a smile “..have you tried that butter chicken packet you purchased yesterday?”. “Erm, not yet” I said, trying not to look suspicious with my dust covered bottle of sauce in one hand, camera in the other. The man behind the till took the bottle, actually rubbed the lid down with the sleeve of his shirt to see the price label better and rung it up. Odd they didn’t charge me any tax on it. *confused look*
Back in the car, I gave the bottle a more thorough going over, and it quickly became apparent that this sauce has very little to do with HP - other than attempting to be a copy-cat at least…
The House of Parliament I had remembered seeing the day before turned out to be what looks like a cathedral of sorts. Turning the bottle to see the right side shows the ingredients listed in French. On the left the ingredients in English are displayed with “SHAKE WELL” underneath. That explains it being separated like it is! Below that is U.K./Prepared For/Trademark of TRITAP FOOD BROKERS.
Now had I looked at all this properly when I was at the store the first time, I probably would’ve left it there. Still my attempts to google for anything that remotely looks or describes this product has so far come up short. I half expected to find mention of another brand of sauce which is most likely very common in the UK, but nothing. A search for TRITAP FOOD BROKERS lists a few hits, one of which has nothing more than the company name and a phone number. Another hit tells of the www.tritap.com domain name as having expired.
I did do a brief search for HP Sauce on ebay which revealed just how little I really know of the history of the stuff. Several people list very very old bottles dating back (in some cases) over 100 years. So much for my theory that HP introduced a sauce to Canada only some 30 years ago under another label.
Still, what’s up with this oddball sauce? If you recognise the label, please use the contact form and bring me up to speed on this! Thanks
January 2nd, 2006 15:49
I bought a bottle in a dollar store in Canada.
January 28th, 2006 12:28
Hi,
I got that bottle from a colleague at work and I’m actually trying to find it somewhere. I have a lots of problem to find it over the net but I’ll try at a dollar store like jimmi said on January 2nd 2006 in your site.
If you can find where we can have it, and let me know about it, it would be marvellous. Thanks a lots!
Carmen
Official Comment - January 29th, 2006 20:50
The only place I’ve ever seen this sauce is at the India Spice House store mentioned above and at a local dollar store. Oddly enough someone in my building at work recently placed one of these on my desk at work not long ago. To be honest, I’m too chicken to try it!
It did jog my memory however, and my co-worker and I went back to the India Spice House only this last week. I looked around for this and/or other sauces; they didn’t have any. They did have various styles of Indian teas, all of which I never heard of. I thought of trying one out, but after giving it some thought, I decided didn’t want to invest close to $10.00 for a pack of 100 tea bags only to discover that I didn’t like it. No sooner than I had put it back on the shelf when the store owner came by to chat with me.
I explained how I wanted to try a new style of tea, but didn’t need or want 100 bags. Unfortunately she didn’t understand me very well and after explaining a few times, she took me to another aisle where she showed me some other teas - only less expensive. By this point I was being polite just by remaining there and my co-worker had already left the shop. I relucantly purchased one of these cheaper teas (also 100 bags btw) and left.
Back at work, I opened up the package where I was greeted with a powerful, but not unpleasant aroma. I made myself a cup of tea and took a sip…. hmmm… I took another sip. Nope, I don’t like this tea. Seeing the puzzled look on my face my co-worker said “Something the matter?”. “It tastes….old” I said, “I can’t drink this.”.
The package stayed on the shared desk between my co-worker and I for the remainder of the day. By days end, he had enough. Taking out a sharpie from his desk, he opened up the tea box and wrote “Free Indian Aged Tea” on the inside of the lid. I burst out laughing as he then picked up the box and took it downstairs to the cafeteria.
That was about a month ago and for the longest time no one had any clue as to who put it there! This box of “aged tea” has actually remained in the same spot for about a month, it’s contents slowly dissapearing! This last friday, I was in the cafeteria fixing myself some toast when someone walked in and said “Is that tea still here? Who left it there anyway? You’d think if it were any good someone would’ve taken the box by now!”. It was all I could do to keep from bursting into hysterics!
I quickly walked out of the cafeteria and as I looked back upon the box, I noticed for the first time the expiration date….October 2005! It truly was “aged” tea! I couldn’t stop laughing the rest of the morning!
Btw, if you’re really keen on finding some of that sauce, write me and perhaps we can work something out.