How do Lea & Perrins make Worcestershire sauce?

Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce recipe

1. Make a pickling liquor with 18kg of malt vinegar and add acetic acid or spirit vinegar until an acidity level of 6.12 percent is reached.
2. Take 9kg unpeeled heads of garlic and 18kg of unpeeled shallots (9kg of unpeeled red onions will suffice as a substitute for the shallots) and add to the pickling liquor. Allow the vegetables to pickle for at least a year until soft.
3. Meanwhile cure 11kg of Spanish anchovies in salt for at least three years.
4. When ready, mix together your pickle with 82 litres of malt vinegar (or walnut ketchup for historical accuracy). Add 6.4kg of Bengal black tamarind paste. Add the anchovies. Then add 15kg of raw sugar and 4.5kg of salt. This is followed by 2.3kg green cayenne peppers from Fujian in China (preferably small and hot), 1kg cloves from Southeast Asia or Zanzibar, ginger, mace and 225ml essence of lemon.
5. Blend together and allow to ferment for a minimum of six weeks. Stir occasionally.
6. Add molasses to achieve the desired colour, and water to get to the desired consistency.
7. Press the ingredients to yield all of their flavour, and then filter the sauce. Pasteurise for two minutes.

Always use the finest ingredients you can source. Mike Page, the Lea & Perrins technical manager, argues that the sauce will continue to age and improve in the bottle.

The original recipe called for 36 litres of soy sauce. It was replaced by hydrolysed vegetable protein from the Second World War but appears to no longer be used.