Similarly, Worcestershire (pronounced “Wooster”) sauce is a condiment. You add a few drops to something you’re seasoning, like the top of a Welsh rarebit (“grilled cheese”) much as you might do with Tabasco sauce.
Gentleman’s relish is a potent anchovy-based paste that you could use like Marmite and spread on toast, though you’d generally use less.
Both are probably distant descendants of garum, the fish sauce that the Romans brought to Britain two thousand years ago. What did the Romans ever do for us, eh?
(Random trivia: Welsh rarebit is probably derived from “Welsh rabbit”, presumably implying that poor Welsh people couldn’t afford meat. Similarly, there’s a dish called Scotch woodcock, which is scrambled eggs on toast topped with gentleman’s relish, presumably implying the same thing about poor Scottish people, or that English landlords in both cases were oppressive and took a very dim view of poaching.)
