Worcestershire Powder: What’s in It, Where It Came From and How to Use It

Want Worcestershire’s tangy, savory punch in a dry rub, or in a dish that doesn’t need more liquid? That’s what Worcestershire powder is for: the sauce dried onto maltodextrin, a starch-based carrier. The labels on the products sold today list the sauce’s own ingredients, from vinegar and molasses to tamarind, but none lists the anchovies of the original sauce. All three declare sulfites. The powder also comes with a Texas TV-cook legend attached and an origin story involving a barrel forgotten in a Worcester cellar.

At a glance

Three labels side by side

There’s no single formula. Here are the ingredient lists of three powders sold in the U.S., as each seller gives them.

The three lists are nearly identical, and none of the sellers says who makes the powder. None lists anchovies or soy, both of which Britannica names among the original sauce’s ingredients.⁴ If you need to avoid fish, check the label of the powder you actually buy. Don’t assume.

Flavor

Read the label as a list of flavors and you get sour (vinegar), sweet (molasses, corn syrup, sugar), fruity-tart (tamarind) and savory (salt, garlic). Spice Jungle calls its powder a significantly more potent Worcestershire seasoning than the sauce.¹

Where Worcestershire sauce came from

Here’s the origin story as Britannica tells it. Early in the 19th century, “store sauces” were fashionable in England. A retired governor of Bengal asked two Worcester chemists, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins, to make a sauce from a recipe he’d brought from India. He didn’t like the result, so they stored the barrel in their cellar and forgot about it for about 18 months. When they tasted it again, aging had improved it, and they put it on sale in 1837. In its original form it contained tamarind, soy, garlic, red onions, anchovies and spices.⁴

We found no independent record of the governor or the forgotten barrel, so take this as Britannica’s version.

Who made the powder?

You’ll often see Worcestershire powder credited to David Wade, a Texas television cooking personality. Paula Bosse’s history of Wade on Flashback Dallas describes him as a cooking instructor and media figure who lived and worked in Dallas for most of his career. He was billed as a “food demonstrator,” not a chef, and died in Tyler in March 2001 at 77. Her readers remembered his Worcestershire Powder as popular and, for most of the 2000s, hard to find.⁵ The piece doesn’t say who invented the powder or when, and we found no source that does.

How to use it

• On meat. Sprinkle it on cooked steaks, pork or roasts.
• In rubs. World Spice calls it a secret kick in many barbecue rubs,² and Woodland Foods suggests combining it with other herbs and spices for a dry rub.³
• In liquids. Add it to sauces, soups and stews, or whisk it into dressings.
• With cheese. Woodland Foods suggests mixing it with Parmesan for pasta, or stirring it into mashed potatoes.³
• As sauce. Spice Jungle gives 1 part powder to 1.5 parts water by weight to make a liquid.¹ That’s the seller’s ratio. No other source we found gives one.

The powder has salt in it, so taste before adding more.

Buying and storage

All three labels declare sulfites, and one declares celery.¹²³ Keep it somewhere cool and dry. Spice Jungle gives a shelf life of 2 years.

Related

• Soy sauce powder and vinegar powder, two other dried condiments
• Garlic powder and onion powder
• Seasoned salt and all-purpose seasoning for other steak seasonings
• Too much vinegar