Rare George IV Silver Sauce Label 'Reading'

A rare George IV silver Sauce Label of oblong form with triple reeded border, incised for Reading.

By Charles Rawlings, London, 1824.

In 1789 James Cocks opened a fishmonger's shop on Butcher's Row, Reading. Within a decade he had moved his shop to Duke Street and from 1802 was marketing a fish sauce that he had devised with his wife Ann. After James died his son Charles took over the business, opening a larger factory on the King's Road in the 1830s.

The sauce stood for between three and five years in large wooden casks. It was then drawn off, bottled and labelled with Cocks's distinctive orange label. The main ingredients of the original sauce were walnut ketchup, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, anchovies, chillies, spices, salt and garlic. Worcester Sauce is the nearest modern equivalent.

Cocks's Reading Sauce obtained a national reputation. In Jules Verne's 1872 adventure novel 'Around the World in Eighty Days' the hero Phileas Fogg breakfasts at London's Reform Club on 'broiled fish with Reading Sauce'.

Reserved - £145.00