Dark glossy Wow-Wow Sauce in a white jug beside sliced roast beef on a rustic wooden board

Regency England · England

Dr Kitchiner's Wow-Wow Sauce

Name: Dr Kitchiner's Wow-Wow Sauce
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: England
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons capers, chopped; 120 ml port wine; 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar; 2 tablespoons English mustard; 1 tablespoon mushroom ketchup; 300 ml beef stock; 30 g butter; 1 tablespoon plain flour; Salt and pepper

From The Cook's Oracle · William Kitchiner · 1817

Verified from original source

A piquant sauce of parsley, mustard and port wine for boiled beef.

Historical note: Chop fine some parsley... add wine, vinegar, mustard...

History

Wow-Wow Sauce was created by Dr William Kitchiner, an English eccentric and culinary writer, first published in The Cook's Oracle (1817). This piquant brown sauce combined port wine, vinegar, pickled walnuts or mushroom ketchup, mustard, and parsley, designed to accompany boiled beef. The whimsical name typified Kitchiner's playful approach to cookery writing. Popular in early 19th-century England among middle-class households who could afford imported wines and pickled delicacies, it represented the era's fondness for robust, assertive condiments. Though largely forgotten by the 20th century, Wow-Wow Sauce occasionally appears in historical recipe recreations and remains a curiosity in British culinary literature.

Sources

William Kitchiner, The Cook's Oracle, 1817
Elizabeth David, Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, 1970
Jennifer Stead, 'Quizzing Glasse' or Hannah Scrutinized in Food and Material Culture: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 1997
Ivan Day, culinary historian and food historian specializing in historic British cookery

Serves

Prep

10m

Cook

15m

Difficulty

Easy