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HP Sauce is a condiment, a popular brown sauce produced in Aston, Birmingham, England by HP Foods. It has a malt vinegar base blended with fruit and spices and is usually eaten as an adjunct to hot or cold savoury food, or used as an ingredient in soups or stews. It is probably the most well known brand of brown sauce in the UK.
The original recipe for HP Sauce was invented and developed by Frederick Gibson Garton, a grocer from Nottingham. He registered the name H.P. Sauce in 1896. Garton called the sauce HP because he had heard that a restaurant in the Houses of Parliament had begun serving it (indeed, bottle labels today carry a picture of the Palace of Westminster). Garton sold the recipe and HP brand for the sum of £150 and the settlement of some unpaid bills to Edwin Samson Moore. Moore, the founder of the Midlands Vinegar Company (the forerunner of HP Foods) subsequently launched HP Sauce in 1903.
Some stories suggest that the name HP was derived from the name Harry Palmer. Palmer was said to have invented the recipe and sold the product as "Harry Palmer's Famous Epsom Sauce". The story then goes that Palmer, an avid gambler at the Epsom races, was forced to sell the recipe (to cover his debts) to F.G. Garton, a grocer from Nottingham. However, there is no evidence in the official history of the brand to show Palmer existed, or had any claim to the development of the recipe. It also seems unlikely that Garton, a grocer from the Midlands would have come in contact with a gambler from the South of England.
HP Sauce became known as "Wilson's Gravy" in the 1960s and 1970s after Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister. The name arose after Mary Wilson gave an interview to the Sunday Times in which she claimed "If Harold has a fault, it is that he will drown everything with HP Sauce". Private Eye's Parliamentary news section is called "HP Sauce". In 1975, when Wilson addressed a banquet to celebrate 100 years since the formation of the Midlands Vinegar Company, he admitted that it was not HP Sauce that he was partial to, but was in fact Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce.
For many years the description on the label was in both English and French. During a 1960s BBC radio broadcast Marty Feldman sang the French version in the style of Jacques Brel. Whether or not the BBC performance has been archived is not known, but the song was also included on Feldman's 1969 album I feel a song going off.
HP Sauce itself is also available in a fruity version. Whilst other sauces are sold under the "HP" name (such as chilli and curry) these are not based on a brown sauce recipe, and thus would not be called "HP Sauce" by most people. Products include the HP "Sauces Of The World" range.
The Aston factory was once bisected by the A38(M) motorway and had a pipeline, carrying vinegar over the motorway, from the Top Yard to the main Tower Road factory site. The Top Yard site has long since closed, and vinegar is no longer brewed on the Aston site.
In June 2005, Heinz purchased the parent company, HP Foods, from Danone However, in October of that year, the UK Office of Fair Trading referred the takeover to the Competition Commission *.
In May 2006, Heinz announced plans to switch production of HP Sauce from Aston to its European sauces facility in Elst, the Netherlands, prompting a call to boycott Heinz products in the Birmingham area. The move will result in the loss of approximately 125 jobs at the Aston factory and has been criticised by Birmingham politicians and union officials. In the same month, Labour MP Khalid Mahmood brandished a bottle of HP Sauce during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons as part of a protest against the Heinz move. He also made reference to the sauce's popularity with the former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
In popular culture
- HP Brown sauce features prominently in the 2003 Irish film Intermission starring Cillian Murphy and Colin Farrell.
See also
External links
British cuisine | Brown sauces | Companies from Birmingham, England | Condiments | Heinz brands
"HP Sauce"