Sometime in the early 1800's, Lord Sandy returned from his
forays in Bengal India to Worchester County, England with a taste for a sauce
he'd sampled while on the Indian sub-continent. He employed two chemists, John Lea
and William Perrins, to duplicate the Indian condiment and the pair created a
concoction they both found unpalatable. So, labeling the attempt a failure,
they packed the bottles away in a cellar. A few years later, the pair stumbled
across the dusty bottles and made the brave decision to sample the contents
once again. To their surprise, aging had greatly improved the sauce and soon
Lea & Perrins began marketing their sauce.
By the 1840's Lea & Perrins sauce had jumped the pond, becoming
the only commercially bottled condiment in the United States.
This ad comes from a 1900 issue of Life Magazine where it was buried among the tiny ads at the back
of the magazine where we would expect to see the ads for x-ray glasses and books on how to get lucky with girls. Clumsy phrasing, butlers in all first class cooks? Okay, so I know it takes a little willful misunderstanding to think they're actually implying the butler is inside the cook, but come on, you're selling something to me. Maybe a little proof reading? An "appealing relish" also sounds a bit clunky to the modern ear, but I'll chalk that one up to archaic language. After all this ad is over 100 years old.
You still can get Lea & Perrins in most supermarkets. One of the few products that have endured this long without being re-imagined by some hipster product designer with big ideas about modern tastes.
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