If you happen to be glancing upon this site for the very first time, right now, it would be quite understandable if your first impressions are that this site must be sponsored by HP. And why not? After all, HP is everywhere around here. It dominates the gallery, and previous posts rave about it. Chances are that our own dear Adham is looking…no, staring across the table at you right now, right past a bottle of Birmingham’s finest. Yes, we are partial to HP Sauce around here, and for good reason. It is the first true British Brown Sauce and as such will always hold a special place on these pages. It is not however the only British Brown Sauce worthy of our attention, and no…we are not in any way sponsored by HP/Heinz. We simply like the stuff you see…a lot!

A good Brown Sauce can take an ordinary meal and help turn it into something special. It adds a tangyness, a richness to the food that only a Brown Sauce can. That ’something special’ has a lot to do with what constitutes its makeup, the very essence which make a Brown Sauce a “Brown Sauce”. So is a Brown Sauce a “Brown Sauce” simply because it’s brown? Not at all. Is it a “Brown Sauce” because it’s British? Again, not entirely. It is a combination of things that, when put together make up that rich, tangy malt flavour we know and love. If I were to narrow it down to two ingredients however it would be these: Malt Vinegar (from Barley) and Spirit Vinegar. Those two ingredients are at the core of a good Brown Sauce, but again, on their own they do not a Brown Sauce make!

Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce is a good example. The first two ingredients in this sauce are in fact Malt Vinegar (from Barley) and Spirit Vinegar. Worcestershire sauce is not what I would classify as “Brown Sauce” however. For a start, its taste is absolutely unique, and it’s application quite different as it is typically used in cooking whereas Brown Sauce is used more often as a condiment. The two DO compliment each other brilliantly, but they are not the same. Nor should they be. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce is in a league all its own and while there are “other” Worcestershire sauces, the ones available on store shelves here in Canada are but poor imitations whom often skimp by with less expensive ingredients. Hardly worth the $1.00 or so savings over the genuine article! The point here is that these sauces don’t try to succeed by doing their own thing. Instead, they imitate, and fail miserably at it.

So where does leave us with todays review du jour? Lets find out as we review Crosse & Blackwell’s Branston Rich & Fruity Sauce. Does Branston’s Rich & Fruity stack up as a proper Brown Sauce? Or is it some thinly disguised imitation of the real thing?

Before I get started, I should give credit to our friend David Bradbury of Devon who first introduced us to his favourite HP Mexican Chilli sauce - a variety which has sadly since been discontinued. So enthusiastic was Mr Bradbury about this HP variety that he sent us a bottle to sample and review and fortunately for us he also included a bottle of Branston Rich & Fruity Sauce, a sauce to which we were previously unacquainted! I became so smitten with the Branston sauce that by the time I reached the bottom of the bottle, I realized I had not yet conducted a proper review! It was then all too late since all that remained of it was an empty bottle discarded at the bottom of our recycling bin! Luckily, I was very fortunate to find another bottle from an alternate supplier so that I can deliver a proper introduction to this tasty sauce.

Branston
Rich & Fruity
Brown Sauce




HP
Mild & Tangy
Brown Sauce When evaluating a new sauce like Branston Rich & Fruity, it is probably best to compare it an old familiar favourite such as HP Mild & Fruity Sauce. While both Branston and HP are marketed as “fruity” variety Brown Sauces, there is however a distinction to be made here, and it becomes obvious if one pays attention to how each sauce is branded. The HP brand marketed its sauce as first Mild, then Tangy and so it comes across on the palette. First impression of HP Mild & Tangy is that of a milder version of the original with a malty, fruity finish. Indeed, over the past couple of years I have heard many a compliment for this variety from people who have written in to say how they actually prefer the Mild & Tangy variety to the original as they find the original a bit spicy. Unfortunately, I’m told the availability of the HP Mild & Tangy variety has become very scarce in recent months (UK) which leaves us speculating whether Heinz has in fact discontinued it.

Tasting the Branston Rich & Fruity immediately following a sample of HP Mild & Tangy, it is apparent that it too tastes just as the name suggests, and in the same order. Branston Rich & Fruity has a bolder start than the HP and the texture thicker. Branston also has a less fruity finish than the HP but instead leaves the tongue lingering with a citrus flavour. It is also a bit spicier but not so much as to overpower the flavour. Some people I’ve spoken to have been put off by the citrus finish, a trait which is also present in the Branston Rich & Tangy variety. While I can understand this view at first glance (taste!), I quickly loose this perspective when using it on my favourite Bacon & Tomato sandwiches. Here the citrus flavour compliments the tomato very very well! It’s as though they were designed for each other, and therein lies the real test. If a Brown Sauce is indeed a true “Brown Sauce”, then there can be only one response when used on a bacon sandwich. YUM!! In this area, Branston does not disappoint!

When combined side by side, I have a hard time deciding which one I like more as each has their own distinctive taste. I love the malty finish to the HP, but I also really like the richness of the Branston. The verdict? Tie! Branston does not try to be an imitator. Rather, they have produced a quality Brown Sauce which stands on its own merit. If you haven’t yet tried Branston Rich & Fruity sauce, I highly encourage you to do so. Throw a tomato in your sarnie as well and I hope you’ll find it as tasty as I do.

Lets compare the ingredients listing for both sauces:

HP Mild & Tangy: Fruit 70% (Tomatoes, Dates, Tamarind Extract, Oranges), Spirit Vinegar, Glucose - Fructose Syrup (from wheat), Malt Vinegar (From Barley), Sugar, Salt, Mango Chutney (Sugar, Mango, Vinegar, Salt, Chilli), Modified Maize Starch, Molasses, Rye Flower, Spices, Flavourings, Pectin.

No artificial colours, No artificial preservatives, No artificial flavours, Suitable for Vegetarians

Branston Rich & Fruity Sauce: Tomato Puree, Sugar, Spirit Vinegar, Malt Vinegar, Apples (with Preservative: Sulphur Dioxide), Date Paste (with Rice Flour), Modified Maize Starch, Salt, Molasses, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Spices, Colour: Sulphite Ammonia Caramel, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder.

Suitable for Vegetarians

Summary

While I enjoy the taste of Branston Rich & Fruity Sauce, there are a couple of ingredients listed which are worth noting, namely the Sulphur Dioxide preservative and the added colouring. HP advertises that no preservatives or colouring are used in their sauce. If Branston were to improve on anything here, it should be to live up to a similar standard.

Comparing HP & Branston “fruity” Brown Sauces leaves me with the following impression. HP Mild & Tangy: Slightly milder with a malty, fruity finish. Branston Rich & Fruity: Slightly richer and thicker with a spicier citrus (less malty) finish.

So, for bacon sarnies “straight up” it’s HP (Original or Mild & Tangy if available). For a slightly more zesty taste, throw in some bacon and tomato and call on Branston for a nice finish. The mouth waters!!

May you and your family enjoy a safe and happy holiday season and may your fridge be ever stocked with Brown Sauce in 2008!

Seasons Greetings from www.brownsauce.org

So what might your plans be for the upcoming weekend? Perhaps you are looking forward to some much needed leisure time. So what will it be? Spending some quality time with the family? Catching up with an old friend over coffee? Clubbing? Or perhaps you’d rather go out and do a little panning for gold with some mates. Say what? If your name is David Bradbury, this may very well be your activity of choice, but more on that in a minute. First, here’s an email I received from Mr. Bradbury of Devon, UK.

Subject: spicy chilli sauce
Message: Sorry I can’t do justice to what I wish to say about chilli sauce, I do have some pix which are so good, the new sauce is so wonderful, even on ginger biscuits. Many thanks for a super sauce.
David Bradbury

I occasionally will receive emails such as this one, loaded with heaps of praise for a sauce which I can take no credit for. If only! I looked over his email and the accompanying picture which contained three bottles of HP Mexican Chilli sauce situated on a rock in the middle of a stream - of which two of the bottles appear somewhat emptied of their contents! Someone really likes his Chilli sauce, but what’s up with the stream? I know I’ve taken pictures of HP bottles in stranger places (ahem), but there had to be a story behind it. I just had to ask…

HP Mexican Chilli Sauce
Submitted by: David Bradbury

Sender: David Bradbury
Message: There I’ve done it, this pix was taken during a gold panning trip on Dartmoor, we, all 3 couldn’t live without our sauce. Keep it going please. Super sauce indeed.

Gold panning?

Hi Brad..well i didnt expect a reply, so good of you to do so. 2morrow i will get some pix to you + my pride in life (next to my wife and two puss cats) is………wait for it…MY SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPE…it hides in the shed, if you can get back to myself and tell me what you wish then i will do it…and as an appetizer (chilli sauce type) if you send your address i will post you a bottle. believe me it is soooooo magic chilli sauce..will write 2morrow with pix and stuff.

Wow. Niche little Brown Sauce website, let me introduce you to Mr. Bradbury – a man who pans for gold in southern England, loves HP Chilli sauce and has a scanning electron microscope in his garden shed! Blows the mind. Err..wait, did he just offer to send out a bottle of ‘magic’ chilli?

We exchange a few more emails and I learn a bit more about the kind David Bradbury and his SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) located in his garden shed.

My hobby of geology started as a small child in Swansea South Wales, I can still recall the Germans bombing my small village, didn’t get me. I grew up with a deep interest in metals and minerals and eventually took a degree in chemistry, after some years and problems between I landed with the UK MOD as a lab tech that lasted for 5 years in that time I learned to use a SEM, when that job finished I took another but not in chemistry, missing chemistry I built a small lab near Exeter Devon, then I bought my first electron mike, took me 6 months to make it work then found I could not afford to run it at 15KW power required so I sold it, Last year Sue said “what are you going to do now you are retired” …..I bought another! It has been very diff with the wet clime we have in UK but it gives me the feedback in “my science” that keeps me and my self respect happy, it got in the shed with a load of huffin puffin n shovin, it weighs 2 tons so it wouldn’t go in the attic.

A 2 ton Electron Microscope situated in his garden shed! Whatever happened to simply toodling around the garage doing some simple woodworking - making tables & chairs and other knickknacks to be given away to family at Xmas? Or how about restoring that old car that’s been sitting behind the house for the past 30 years? No, that simply wouldn’t work for Mr. Bradbury. As it turns out, the Scanning Electron Microscope requires the object placed within it to be coated in trace amounts of gold (a small lightbulb appears above my head). This is how and why the bottles ended up on a rock in a stream to be photographed! I’m starting to make a bit of sense of it all.

David Bradbury at his Scanning Electron Microscope
Devon, United Kingdom
^*Click the image above for a biography of Mr Bradbury

So what of the bottle of HP ‘magic’ Chilli sauce on offer? Was it on its way to Canada? It turned out there was some confusion over whether Customs would find it acceptable to have a bottle sent to Canada from the UK (perhaps they’d want to keep it for themselves!), but in the end there wasn’t an issue after all. In fact, Bradbury and his wife even went out of their way to accommodate a request for a bottle of Branston Brown – a commodity which is somewhat hard to find commodity in Devon apparently! In return, all Mr. Bradbury wished for in exchange was a small amount of soil taken from the nearby Red River in Winnipeg to place in his microscope; a request I was all too happy oblige.

With the exchange made, I was all too eager to dive in and try this HP Mexican Chilli sauce variety – a variety not sold here in North America. I was not disappointed and immediately understood Mr. Bradbury’s enthusiasm for this sauce. If you are a chilli (chili in Canada) lover, this sauce is not to be overlooked. It has a very pleasant taste yet chilli hot and not at all watered down or diminished in any way. I would highly recommend this sauce as the perfect accompaniment on barbequed hamburgers (patties made with Worcestershire sauce of course). Another good use would be on nachos and salsa to give it that bit of extra kick. Again, if you like a nice spicy chilli sauce, HP Mexican Chilli comes highly recommended. Ooh, how about a Thai or green curry sauce?

As a side note, although this bottle is not the original variety, it is the first “made in Holland” HP branded sauce I have yet come across. I do have plans on importing a “made in Holland” bottle of the original variety which I will compare with a Birmingham made bottle.

Back to Mr. Bradbury and his Scanning Electron Microscope as I have but one more question to ask: “Btw, what would a dollop of brown sauce look like if inspected with that fancy contraption of yours? Sorry, I couldn’t resist asking! “

Is it possible to combine these two worlds some sort of odd Brown Sauce mineralogical experiment?

TRIED IT..VERY DIFF..COZ IT WOULD BOIL IN THE HIGH VAC …THEN EXPLODE…BUT..Aha ! AZ THERE ALWAYS IZ..THERE IZ A WAY AND HERE IT IZ…NOW ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY ? AND THE SECRET DARK ART OF TAKING STUFF AND BREAKING IT DOWN INTO SIMPLER COMPONENTS, IN BASIS ITS ALL DUE TO FILTRATION AND WASHING VIA GRAVIMETRIC SEPARATION…STILL WITH ME ?…ANYWAY..AFTER 300 YEARS AND 200,000,000 GALLONS OF WORTER !!!!! …ERM…ER…NO FORGET IT …LIFE AINT LONG ENOUGH TO EMBARK UPON A LENGHTY “ALCHEMICAL” TRIEST….THE PAIN…SUFFERING…NO SLEEP…AND WORSER…NO DAMN…SAUCE…

Enough said!

So there he was, our Adham (see picture above), walking the streets of Manchester, England without aim nor purpose when he rounded a corner and saw a face he instantly recognized. For across the courtyard was none other than Sean Wilson, the actor extraordinaire best known for his legendary and charismatic portrayal of Martin Platt on the long running British soap opera/comedy/high drama - Coronation Street. Martin (or Maah’in) as he’s known in these parts was a key character on Corrie up until 2005 when he and young Katy Harris (Kay’teh ‘arris), 16, ruffled many a feather on the street when they publicly announced their undying love for each other. Unfortunately for our dear Martin, the Harris clan was not long for this world and their romance ended when Katy committed suicide shortly after accidentally killing her father Tommy Harris (Tommeh ‘arris) in Kevin Websters’ garage during a passionate row spurred on by her teenage love for Martin. It’s all so very complicated - still, to this fan, the Katy/Martin story was one of the best subplots on Corrie in recent memory. Martin has always been one of my favourite characters on the show since I started watching in the mid 90’s, and knowing my love of things Corrie, Adham made my day when he briefly appeared on MSN last week and simply said “Check your email” before instantly signing off in his typical fashion.

I checked my email and there he was, Adham standing next Sean Wilson. I tried to picture the scene where moments before, Adham had run across the courtyard to confront…er politely ask Mr Wilson for a photo. The conversation, as incredibly brief as it was, went something like this:

Adham: “I have a friend in Canada who’s like…your biggest fan!”
Sean: No response.

No response!? Nothing at all to say to his ‘biggest fan’? Tsk tsk Mr. Wilson! As it turns out Mr Wilson was just on his way to a wedding, the reason to which Adham attributes him as being ‘all tarted up’. Despite Adham’s persistence, he nevertheless agreed to a photo. What a sport! Thanks Maah’in!!

Adham Fisher & Sean Wilson (aka Martin Platt)
Manchester, England

Adham being Adham needless to say wasn’t content at merely getting a photo (pho’oh when in Manchester) with Mr. Wilson, he just had to give him a copy of his Mothers’ Day CD as well. To think Mr. Wilson may now be riding about in his car listening to “It’s the day after Mothers’ Day…It’s the day after Mothers’ Day” just blows the mind. This is what the Internet age has brought us. What a wonderful world.

Just one more thing before we let Mr. Wilson on his way. Just how does he like his Brown Sauce?? When I asked this of Adham he bashfully admitted that he forgot to ask! ADHAM!! Sigh!

I now put this out as an open question to Sean Wilson. Mr Wilson…..red, or brown?