Sauces
Steakhouse Sauce
A homemade fruity brown steak sauce in the American steakhouse style: raisins, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, vinegar and orange, blended smooth. Keeps for 2 weeks.
- Serves 8
- Prep 10 min
- Cook 5 min
- Makes about 300 ml (1¼ cups)
- American
Method
Put the raisins in a small heatproof jug or bowl, pour over the boiling water and leave for 5 minutes to plump up.
Tip the raisins and their water into a blender (or use a stick blender) with the ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, vinegar, orange zest and juice, soy sauce and sugar. Blend until completely smooth.
Pour into a small pan and simmer gently for 5 minutes, stirring, until it is thick enough to coat a spoon. Season with pepper and a little salt if it needs it.
Cool, then keep in a clean jar in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Serve at room temperature with grilled steak, burgers or cold roast beef.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
Serve with: Perfect Steak
- Perfect Steak: cuts and cooking guide
- Sirloin Steak (US: New York Strip Steak)
- Rump Steak (US: Top Sirloin Steak)
- Fillet Steak (US: Filet Mignon)
- T-bone Steak (US: T-bone or Porterhouse)
- Rib-eye Steak (US: Ribeye Steak)
More sauces for steak: Peppercorn Sauce, Béarnaise, Diane Sauce, Chimichurri, Steakhouse Sauce, Blue Cheese Sauce, Horseradish Cream, Garlic and Herb Butter, Maître d’Hôtel Butter.
Chef’s notes
- Raisins give the fruity body and dark colour of a bottled brown steak sauce without any special ingredients.
- For more tang, add an extra teaspoon of vinegar; for heat, a pinch of cayenne.
- This is our own fruity brown steak sauce in the American steakhouse style, not a copy of any brand’s recipe.
About this dish
America’s best-known steak sauce began in London. Henderson William Brand, a former royal cook, said he created his sauce in 1862 while running the kitchens at the International Exhibition in Hyde Park, where the Chief Commissioner pronounced it "A1" (Brand’s own advertisement in The Times, 15 July 1881, quoted by the Online Etymology Dictionary). The often-repeated story that it was made for King George IV in 1824 is doubtful.
Brand & Co.’s A.1. was imported into the US by G. F. Heublein & Brothers from the early 1900s and marketed there as a steak sauce from the 1960s; it faded from British shops in the 1970s (Wikipedia; Let’s Look Again).
How this recipe was developed
Our own recipe, using the raisin method popularised by America’s Test Kitchen and the orange of classic British brown sauces.
- Raisins soaked in boiling water. America’s Test Kitchen’s Classic Steak Sauce uses raisins for body and fruitiness.
- Orange. Victorian brown sauces (A1 among them, according to Let’s Look Again) used tomato, raisins and orange.
- A short simmer. ours is simmered for 5 minutes so it thickens and keeps longer.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):
- America's Test Kitchen: Classic Steak Sauce
- History: Online Etymology Dictionary: A-1
- History: Wikipedia: A.1. Sauce
- History: Let's Look Again: Why can’t you get A1 sauce in the UK?
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.