Monkey gland sauce has its origins in
South Africa. It has been featured as a
restaurant
A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearan ...
item since the 1930s, becoming a South African restaurant and
fast food
Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredien ...
staple
condiment. It is a thick, sweet and tangy sauce and dark in colour. It is typically served as a topping for grilled steaks or burgers, but is also used as a marinade, a dipping sauce for onion rings and fries, or on roasted potatoes.
Ingredients
The main components of monkey gland sauce are
chutney and
tomato sauce – which result in a sweet mixture. Then an addition of
onions,
vinegar,
garlic
Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plant in the genus ''Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, Allium fistulosum, Welsh onion and Allium chinense, Chinese onion. It is native to South A ...
and
Worcestershire sauce, give it a savoury-sweet flavour
Naming
Despite its name, the sauce does not contain any monkey glands.
There are various theories on the origins of the sauce but the most likely is that it originated with French chefs at the old Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg.
South African diners added sauces such as chutney, tomato sauce, and Worcester sauce to the French dishes before eating it. Thus, the disgruntled chefs combined all the condiments to create a sauce which they named monkey gland sauce. There was speculation at the time that monkey glands could slow down ageing.
A more outlandish theory is that it was named after Russian-born French scientist,
Dr Serge Abrahamovitch Voronoff, who was a regular visitor at the Savoy hotel in London. One of his medical experiments involved grafting monkey testicle tissue onto impotent men as a cure. The hotel renamed his favourite steak dish the "monkey gland steak" when he became famous. Then an ex-Savoy waiter brought it over to South Africa in the 1930s.
See also
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Monkey Gland – cocktail
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List of dips
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List of sauces
The following is a list of notable culinary and prepared sauces used in cooking and food service.
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Notes
References
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Sauces
South African cuisine
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