It's used 4,600 times a second but many North Americans have never heard of Maggi

When Daniel Allan was researching Mexican drinks, he came across an unfamiliar ingredient one that immediately sparked his imagination.

"A sauce called Jugo Maggi," said the 34-year-old former bartender, who lives in Winnipeg.

"My mouth is absolutely watering and so I thought I've got to find this Jugo Maggi and see what it's all about."

He tracked down a bottle in a small grocery store in Winnipeg, poured a few drops on the back of his hand, and licked it.

"Wow,this is intense ... I just knew it had to be in a Caesar," said Allan, whowon a contest using Jugo Maggi as a secret ingredient in his adaptation of the classic Canadian drink.

"This sauce is so meaty and rich and big," he said.

"Without [tasting] like a medium-rare steak per se."

Maggi ranked as atop-five consumer brandglobally

Jugo Maggi more commonly known as Maggi Seasoning is one of the most popular condiments on earth.

The market research firm Kantar, which publishes a report every year ranking the brand footprint of the world's most recognized consumer packaged goods, pegs Maggi at number three.

That puts the sauce justbehind giants such asCoca-Cola or Colgate.

Nestl, which owns the Maggi brand, estimates that more than 4,600 food portions are prepared across the world using Maggi products every second.Larger markets include Germany, India, the Middle East and Central and West Africa.

Everyone thinks it's theirs

While Canadians and Americans remain largely in the dark when it comes to Maggi, many other cultures likes to claim it as theirown.

Calgary restaurateur Shovik Sengupta thought it was from India, where his family originated. He grew up with Maggi Hot and Sweet Sauce, and its taste evokes memories of childhood.

"Maggi entered my life early," said 40-year-oldSengupta, who explained his family would go to India every few years to spend the entire summer.

"There were always Maggi commercials. Sitting in certain restaurants, they'd have chutneys but they'll often have a bottle of Maggi Hot and Sweet at the table."

Senguptais co-owner of Calcutta Cricket Club,a hip restaurant on Calgary's famous 17th Avenue SW, and said hespreads his love for Maggi through the restaurant'skati rolls.

According toSengupta, the sauce adds a critical "umami" taste to the menu offering.

The secret isumami, viahydrolyzed vegetable protein

Umami is a Japanese word that roughly translates to "delicious, savoury taste."

If there's one thing Maggi is known for, it's adding alittle umami magic.

Central to many Maggi products is an ingredient called hydrolyzed vegetable protein, produced by boiling foods such as soy, corn, or wheat in hydrochloric acid and then neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide.

"It doesn't sound appealing but it adds such an interesting and essential flavour even to plain rice, that's why it's travelled all over the world," said Maryann Tebben, author of Sauces: A Global History.

Sauces that are popular across different cuisines tend to be versatile, she said.

"The Maggi company allows individual countries to sort of tweak the formula so it might be a little more pungent or a little more salty,"said Tebben.

The North American market

So why hasn't Maggi, or any ofits 7,000 versions, been able to capture the North American market and become a kitchen staple in every household?

It's a tale of food history and competition.

Julius Maggi, the Swiss creator and namesake of the Maggi empire, became a pioneer in food production in the mid-1880s when he created a new type of flour made with ground-up peas and beans in Zurich. Soon after came the company's first concentrated bouillon.

An old advertisement from 1895 was found by soy historian Bill Shurtleff, who wrote 40 books on soy-based foods.

It listed Maggi bouillon next to Liebig's Extract of Meat

"They must have been very similar products," said Shurtleff.

But in America, Maggi sauce ran into another competitor one that had cornered the market a few decades earlier.

"Lea and Perrins got their Worcestershire sauce on every ocean liner leaving and coming into Britain by paying the head steward a fee for each bottle that he took," said Shurtleff.

"People who were on those liners who were obviously wealthytasted this thing like they'd never tasted before."

By the time Maggi came around, Shurtleff said America had gone through a Worcestershire sauce craze. Imitationshad popped up all over the country and the New York Times archives from the latter half of the 19thcentury are peppered with legal notices from Lea and Perrins challenging the imitators.

The taste of meat without the meat

There is one final detail that could help solve themystery of why Maggi isn't as popular in North America.

Maggi was created to add a meat-like, umamiflavour to food.

Pulses the main ingredient in Maggi's early creations were seen as a solution to improving the lives of Swiss workers, because in Nestl's words, "nutritious meat was beyond their meagre budgets."

Though Nestl Canada declined to comment on its marketing strategy, from the beginning Maggi seasoning has beenadvertised as a vegetarian product.

Maggi creates a meatflavourwithout ahefty price.It's an irresistible promise for many places in the world, but less so in North America.

"We are used to getting our flavour ... from things like steak and hamburgers and other types of meat," said soy historian Shurtleff.

North Americans eat the real thing

Americans and Canadians still lead most of the world when it comes to meat consumption per capita.

"We are addicted to meat," said Sylvain Charlebois, professor of food distribution at Dalhousie University.

"Number one, the socio-cultural factor. Basically, it's part of our diet," he said.

"Two, wealth. You need wealth in the economy to eat meat."

In addition, North Americans are often not enticed byoffal or organ meats, includingtraditional dishes from Anglo-Saxon cultures such as black pudding, head cheese and haggis. That reflects our abundance of expensive meat in recent history, and with an abundance of expensive meat Maggi is not a necessityto add umami.

Not only can we skip the entrails, we don't even need the seasoning.

Because who needs Maggi, when you've got steak?

Written by Falice Chin.