A Staffordshire village and a wartime factory
The pickle was first produced in 1922 at a Crosse and Blackwell factory in the Staffordshire village of Branston, near Burton upon Trent. The factory itself had a fairly dramatic prior life as a wartime machine gun facility before Crosse and Blackwell acquired it in 1920 for a sum that would raise eyebrows in any era. The recipe is attributed to a Mrs Caroline Graham and her daughters, though the full story of how it came together is one of those corners of food history that the official record does not illuminate especially well. The brand simply took the name of the village where it was born, which turned out to be a better decision than keeping the factory going. Production moved to Bermondsey, London by 1925, and later to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, where it is made today.
India, via a British pub
The pickle's character owes more to Indian chutneys and pickles than the label tends to suggest. Anglo-Indians brought a taste for spiced, vinegared condiments back to Britain from the Raj, and what became Branston Pickle was an adaptation of that tradition for British kitchens. The result found its natural home in the ploughman's lunch, a pub staple that rose to real prominence from the 1950s and 1970s onward. Bread, cheese, and a large spoonful from a brown jar: a lunch that requires almost no effort and somehow always satisfies. The cheese and pickle sandwich owes a comparable debt, and Branston remains the name most associated with it.
Crosse and Blackwell, Nestlé, Premier Foods, and a Japanese buyer
The company behind the jar has changed hands more than once, which is politely described in brand histories as a story of growth and evolution. Crosse and Blackwell, who made the original pickle, had already secured a royal warrant from Queen Victoria in 1837, one of the first companies to do so, so the respectability was well established. Nestlé acquired the Crosse and Blackwell Group in 1960, and the pickle came along with everything else. In 2004 Nestlé sold the pickle business to Premier Foods and production moved to Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Then in late 2012, Premier Foods sold the Branston brand to Mizkan Group, a Japanese food manufacturer, for 92.5 million pounds. Mizkan continues to make it in Suffolk. The jar on the shelf today is the same recipe travelling through a very long chain of corporate paperwork.
Seventeen million jars a year, and counting
The scale at which Branston Pickle is consumed in the UK is one of those facts that sounds implausible until you think about it for a moment. Around 17 million jars are sold there annually, which represents an enormous quantity of cheese sandwiches, ploughman's lunches, and quiet Tuesday evenings with crackers. The small chunk version serves people who want the same flavour with a slightly more manageable texture: it sits flat in a sandwich, stays put on a cracker, and does not require the kind of structural commitment that a large chunk occasionally demands.
A jar that travels well, sentimentally speaking
For British people in Canada, Branston Pickle occupies a specific and slightly irrational amount of emotional real estate. It is the kind of thing that ends up on a list of things a visiting relative is asked to bring in their luggage, before someone discovers it can simply be ordered properly. The ploughman's lunch does not translate perfectly to a Canadian supermarket, but the pickle does. A decent cheddar is findable. Bread is not a problem. The jar is the part that requires a little more searching, which is exactly where The Great British Shop comes in.
