I come to you, reader, with some insight, life-long frustration, and extensive research.
I have taken 17 trips around the sun. 17. You would think that traveling around the sun for 17 consecutive years is the hardest thing anyone could ever do — you would be incredibly incorrect. My greatest hurdle is pronouncing Worcestershire sauce, and I do not take this obstacle lightly. After 17 years of living, a single word with excellent scrabble potential has the power to rip my self-worth to shreds? I reject it. I loathe it. I will fight Worcestershire till the day I stop revolving around the sun.
From my research I have concluded two things:
Worcestershire sauce was created in the 1800s in Worcester, England by John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, both of whom were chemists and pharmacists. The story goes that Lea and Perrins made Worcestershire by accident, and deemed it an excellent digestive product to stock all grocery shelves with. Living in Worcester, Lea and Perrins called their concoction “Worcestershire sauce,” but my question, is why? After already living in Worcester, a city that is missing necessary clarifying letters, why would you ever think to then add more confusing letters to your sauce name? No one in Google has the answer to my questions, and the 1800’s was a long time ago, so unfortunately, I am unable to directly contact Perrins nor Lea, but I do have a hypothesis.
They had to be hobbits.
A shire can be thought of as any rural county in the UK, most countryside towns and areas are called shires. Heres the kick: if you look up “shire,” you will be hurdled into a land of pictures that look something like this
I have taken 17 trips around the sun. 17. You would think that traveling around the sun for 17 consecutive years is the hardest thing anyone could ever do — you would be incredibly incorrect. My greatest hurdle is pronouncing Worcestershire sauce, and I do not take this obstacle lightly. After 17 years of living, a single word with excellent scrabble potential has the power to rip my self-worth to shreds? I reject it. I loathe it. I will fight Worcestershire till the day I stop revolving around the sun.
From my research I have concluded two things:
- never allow a pharmacist to create their own condiment
- never ever allow a pharmacist to collaborate with another pharmacist to collectively work together to create their own condiment
Worcestershire sauce was created in the 1800s in Worcester, England by John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, both of whom were chemists and pharmacists. The story goes that Lea and Perrins made Worcestershire by accident, and deemed it an excellent digestive product to stock all grocery shelves with. Living in Worcester, Lea and Perrins called their concoction “Worcestershire sauce,” but my question, is why? After already living in Worcester, a city that is missing necessary clarifying letters, why would you ever think to then add more confusing letters to your sauce name? No one in Google has the answer to my questions, and the 1800’s was a long time ago, so unfortunately, I am unable to directly contact Perrins nor Lea, but I do have a hypothesis.
They had to be hobbits.
A shire can be thought of as any rural county in the UK, most countryside towns and areas are called shires. Heres the kick: if you look up “shire,” you will be hurdled into a land of pictures that look something like this
Tell me that does not look like a hobbit house. After 200+ years of Worcestershire sauce, maybe this is the answer — Perrins and Lea were actually the first documented real-life characters from the Lord of the Rings. They added “Shire” to Worchester because they were signaling to us that they were actually magical beings living in grassy hills.