The Umami-Rich Condiment Your Grilled Cheese Needs For More Flavor

It's time to up the ante on your grilled cheese with an unassuming condiment: Worcestershire sauce. This savory, tangy, and slightly sweet sauce is a perfect complement to the rich, creamy flavors of your favorite cheese (American melts the best). It works well for open-faced sandwiches too, if you're more inclined to make a Welsh rarebit toasty.

Luckily, there are multiple ways to incorporate Worcestershire sauce into a grilled cheese. The first is to dunk the warm sandwich into a cup of the pungent, peppery sauce to soak up the meaty, garlicky notes and ensure the bread remains crispy and toasty. Another option is to generously sprinkle the sauce between cheese layers before melting it. (Keep Worcestershire away from warm bread to minimize potential mushiness.) You could even add a dash of Worcestershire to the melted butter in the pan to increase the saltiness factor on the buttery coating of the bread.

Notes uncovered in the 1800s list tamarind, garlic cloves, salt, sugar, fish, lemons, and vinegar among the original ingredients for Worcestershire sauce (full pronunciation guide here). It was created by English pharmacists John Wheely Lea and William Henry Perrins in 1837. However, the first batch seemed like an edible experiment gone wrong, so the pair left it in their pharmacy basement for several months, unsure what to do with it. After aging for 18 months, someone tried the sauce again, and it was not only palatable but delicious.

Lea and Perrins named the sauce after the town of Worcester, where they ran a small drug store. To differentiate their sauce from competitors, the duo placed a signature orange label on every bottle (the orange label is still used today) and began advertising it immediately. Consumers put it in soups, dressings, and even sandwiches, like Welsh rarebit. The rest, as they say, is history.