In the history of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce it is claimed that
The story of Lea & Perrins famous Worcestershire Sauce begins in the early 1800s, in the county of Worcester. Returning home from his travels in Bengal, Lord Sandys, a nobleman of the area, was eager to duplicate a recipe he'd acquired.
Does anyone know what that original recipe from Bengal might have been? Are there any Bengali dishes that might have been the inspiration for Lea & Perrins?
Best Answer
The trouble with the Lea & Perrin's story & Lord Sandys' "original recipe" is that it is mainly myth/fable/advertising copy (I'd hate to outright call it a lie…)
Worcestershire Sauce originally was basically curry powder and water, with anchovy sauce. It didn't start from a Bengali sauce at all, it started from curry powder, which someone decided to mix with water.
The rest is kind of true; it was too strong when freshly-made but after having been abandoned in a cellar for some time, turned out more palatable.
It's never been impossible to copy, though perhaps difficult to get exactly the same. HP Sauce did a similar thing with a thick sauce - they went the fruit route; somebody was thinking of chutneys when they modified to arrive at that. Some companies make both, thick and thin. A million others make generic 'brown sauce' all tasting just about the same.
Interestingly, a later Lord Sandys himself later tried to cash in on the story - http://lordsandys.com/product-info/ though never really gained the worldwide reputation Lea & Perrin managed to solidify.
From the lovely, if rather dated in its HTML skills, Science of Cooking - Worcestershire Sauce
There's a second confirmation of this being the potentially "true story" at https://www.foodbeast.com/news/worcestershire-sauce-history/
There's also a BBC News story about a potential discovery of the original recipe - Recipes for secret sauce emerge which gives this as the ingredients list, but no detail on how they transformed that into the famous brown stuff…
I don't think there's really any doubt that Messrs Lea & Perrin took the beginnings of an idea and turned it into something rather spectacular, just that the 'origin story' is perhaps best left to the mists of time.