A Staffordshire village, a factory, and someone called Ermentrude
The pickle first came out of a Crosse and Blackwell factory in the village of Branston, near Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, in 1922. The recipe is attributed to a Mrs Caroline Graham and her daughters Evelyn and Ermentrude, which is either a charming detail or a very good piece of company mythology, depending on how cynical you are feeling. The factory itself had only recently been converted from wartime use, purchased by Crosse and Blackwell in 1920 for a considerable sum. Within a few years it was deemed uneconomical, and production moved to a subsidiary in Bermondsey, London, by January 1925. The village gave the pickle its name and then watched manufacturing leave. That happens rather a lot in British food history.
Where the recipe came from, roughly speaking
The character of Branston Pickle owes something to the Indian pickles and chutneys that Anglo-Indians brought back from the British Raj and adapted to British tastes. The result was a dark, sweet, spiced sauce built around diced swede, carrots, onions, and cauliflower, with vinegar, tomato, apple, and spices doing most of the heavy lifting. It sits somewhere between a pickle and a chutney, which is part of why it works as well as it does. It is both things and neither, and it is entirely at home next to a wedge of cheese.
How it ended up on every cheese sandwich in Britain
Branston Pickle became the dominant player in a very specific British meal format: the cheese and pickle sandwich. Whether that was the result of clever marketing, genuine merit, or sheer persistence is hard to say, but the outcome is that for most British people, pickle on a cheese sandwich essentially means Branston. The ploughman's lunch connection helped as well. That pub staple, which became genuinely popular from the 1950s and through the 1970s, practically required a little jar on the side. Branston was already there waiting. Roughly seventeen million jars a year sell in the UK, which suggests the country remains largely committed to the arrangement.
Quite a few owners since Staffordshire
The brand has moved around a fair amount. Nestlé acquired the Crosse and Blackwell Group in 1960, which brought Branston along with it. In 2004, Nestlé sold the pickle business to Premier Foods, and production shifted to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Then in 2012, Premier Foods sold the Branston brand to Mizkan Group, a Japanese food manufacturer, for around ninety-two and a half million pounds. Mizkan continues to produce it at Bury St Edmunds. The jar looks reassuringly familiar, whatever it says on the corporate organisational chart.
What it means to the people who grew up with it
For British expats, Branston Pickle occupies a very specific place in the mental geography of home. It is the ploughman's at the pub. It is the sandwich made in someone's kitchen with a doorstep of bread and a slab of cheddar. It is the jar that lived in the fridge for months and was never quite finished before the next one appeared. It is also, frankly, the sort of thing that is genuinely difficult to replace with a local alternative, because nothing quite behaves the same way on a cracker. Canada has many fine qualities. Branston Pickle is not native to it.
The 720g jar earns its place
The 720g jar is the sensible size. It lasts, it does not disappear after two sandwiches, and it signals a level of commitment to cheese and pickle that is entirely appropriate for people who know what they are about. If someone sent you here looking for it, or if you found it yourself after a long absence from British supermarket shelves, The Great British Shop keeps it in stock for exactly that reason.
