Tabasco sauce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tabasco sauce is a table condiment made from tabasco peppers (Capsicum frutescens var. tabasco), vinegar, and salt, and aged in white oak barrels for three years. It has a hot, spicy flavor and is popular in many parts of the world.
Tabasco is trademarked as the brand name for the variety of tabasco sauce marketed by the McIlhenny Company of Avery Island, Louisiana. Often, the word "tabasco" is rendered in lowercase when referring to the botanical variety, but in uppercase, "Tabasco," when referring to the actual trademarked brandname. While there are many other kinds of "hot pepper sauce" on the market, most of them similar to Tabasco, Tabasco is by far the most famous. Although it is produced in the United States, it acquired its name from the state of Tabasco in Mexico.
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[edit] History
Born in 1815 in Hagerstown, Maryland, Edmund McIlhenny moved around 1840 to Louisiana, where he worked as a banker. When he was ruined financially by the American Civil War, friends and family suggested that he enter a new trade by marketing a pepper sauce that he had originally developed for his own table.[1]
Following this advice, McIlhenny grew his first crop of commercial tabasco peppers on Avery Island in 1868, and he sold his first sauce made from this crop in 1869.
In 1870 McIlhenny obtained letters patent for his invention, which he packaged in cork-top two-ounce bottles with diamond logo labels very similar in appearance to those in present-day use.
At first McIlhenny sold his sauce primarily along the Gulf Coast of the southern U.S., particularly in New Orleans, the nearest major city. By the mid-1870s he had introduced Tabasco sauce to most major U.S. cities, and by the end of the decade he was exporting the product to Europe and elsewhere in limited quantities.
McIlhenny died in 1890. His family expanded production and modernized its business practices. By the early 1900s, Tabasco was known throughout the U.S. and beyond, and had practically become synonymous with pepper sauce. Indeed, by the late 1800s and early 1900s it could be found throughout Europe, as well as in India, China, Egypt, west Africa, and elsewhere.[citation needed]
The place of manufacture on Tabasco bottles originally read "New Iberia, Louisiana," because in the nineteenth-century New Iberia had been the closest shipping hub to the Tabasco factory on Avery Island. In the 1980s, however, McIlhenny Company changed the place of manufacture to read "Avery Island," which was not only more accurate, but connected the product to its romantic place of birth in the marshes of rural Iberia Parish.
[edit] Production
[edit] Varieties
Tabasco has been produced by McIlhenny Company since 1868. Several new types of sauces are now produced under the name Tabasco Sauce, including jalapeño-based green, chipotle-based smoked, habanero, garlic, and "sweet and spicy" sauces. McIlhenny also produces a Tabasco soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce.
The habanero sauce and garlic sauces both include the tabasco peppers blended with other peppers, whereas the jalapeño variety does not include tabasco peppers.
[edit] Heat
The original, classic red variety of Tabasco pepper sauce measures 2,500-5,000 SHU on the Scoville scale. The habanero sauce is considerably hotter, rating 7,000-8,000 Scoville units. The chipotle sauce, which adds chipotle pepper to the original sauce, measures 2,000-2,500. The garlic variety, which blends milder peppers in with the tabasco peppers, rates 1,200-1,800 Scovilles, and the green pepper (jalapeño) sauce is even milder at 600-800 Scovilles. Their Sweet and Spicy sauce is the mildest at only 100-600 Scoville Units.
[edit] Agriculture
The peppers were traditionally grown on Avery Island. While there is a small portion of the crop still grown on the island, the bulk of the crop is now grown in Central and South America, where the weather and the availability of more farmland allow a more predictable and larger year-round supply of peppers. This also helps to ensure the supply of peppers should something happen to the crop at a particular location.
Traditionally, the peppers are hand picked by workers. To tell their ripeness, they are checked with a little red stick, or 'le petit bâton rouge' that each worker carries around. Those peppers not matching the color of the stick are not harvested.
[edit] Packaging
Tabasco brand pepper sauce is sold in more than 160 countries and territories and is packaged in 22 languages and dialects. More than 700,000 bottles of Tabasco sauce are produced each day at the Tabasco factory on Avery Island, Louisiana. (Free factory tours are available; access to Avery Island requires a one dollar toll.) These bottles range in size from the common two-ounce and five-ounce (57 and 150 ml) bottles available in most grocery stores, up to a one US gallon (3.8 liter) jug for food service businesses, and down to a 1/8th-ounce miniature bottle. (McDonalds used these diminutive Tabasco bottles during early McRib promotions.)
[edit] Merchandise
In addition, the company has cashed in on its brand name by licensing the production of branded merchandise, including neckties, hand towels, golf shirts, boxer shorts, posters, Bloody Mary mix, and even casino slot machines featuring the trademarked diamond logo.
[edit] Usage
McIlhenny Company now produces numerous Tabasco brand products that contain pepper seasoning, including popcorn, nuts, olives, mayonnaise, mustard, steak sauce, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, grilling/marinating sauce, barbeque sauce, chili sauce, pepper jelly, and Bloody Mary mix. McIlhenny Company also permits other brands to use and advertise Tabasco sauce as an ingredient in their products, including Spam (food), Slim Jim beef sticks, Heinz ketchup, A1 steak sauce, Plochman's mustard, Cheez-It crackers, Lawry's salt, and Vlasic pickles.
Tabasco sauce has a shelf life of five years when stored in a cool and dry place.
In Korea, Japan, Israel, Pakistan, Norway, Finland and parts of Canada, Tabasco sauce is popular on pizza.
[edit] Tabasco and the U.S. military
Tabasco does not openly advertise its history with the U.S. Armed Forces. During the Spanish-American War, John Avery McIlhenny, son of Tabasco's inventor and the second president of McIlhenny Company, served in the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, better known as Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders. His son, Brigadier General Walter Stauffer McIlhenny, USMCR, a World War II veteran and recipient of the Navy Cross, presided over McIlhenny Company from 1949 until his death in 1985. During the Vietnam War, BGen. McIlhenny issued the The Charlie Ration Cookbook. (Charlie ration is slang for the field meal given to troops.) This cookbook came wrapped around a two-ounce bottle of Tabasco sauce in a camouflaged, water-resistant container. It included instructions on how to mix C-rations to make such tasty concoctions as “Combat Canapés” or “Breast of Chicken under Bullets.”
During the 1980s, the U.S. military began to include miniature bottles of Tabasco sauce in its MREs. Eventually, miniature bottles of Tabasco sauce were included in two-thirds of all MRE menus. During the same period, McIlhenny Company issued a new military-oriented cookbook, titled The Unofficial MRE Cookbook, which it offered free of charge to U.S. Troops. In response to these gestures, service personnel wrote many letters of thanks to McIlhenny Company.
Most recently, U.S. troops in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom used miniature Tabasco bottles to decorate their Christmas trees. Some soldiers used the bottles to make chess sets, while others in the field put Tabasco sauce in their eyes to stay awake while on sentry duty (a use that is not recommended by the manufacturer). Many U.S. troops have returned miniature bottles to McIlhenny Company filled with soil from local camps and bases in Iraq and elsewhere.
McIlhenny Company's relationship with the military extends beyond combat situations. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps list over 400 mess halls that offer Tabasco sauce on their tables. In fact, Tabasco sauce is found on the table of every Officer's Mess in the Marine Corps.
Walter Stauffer McIlhenny was a benefactor of the Marine Military Academy. As a result, bottle of Tabasco sauce can be found on every table in the school's mess hall. McIlhenny was a member of the Academy's General H. M. Smith Foundation, and the school named one of its buildings after him.
[edit] Tabasco in space
Through NASA's relation to the US Military, Tabasco has found its way into the space program. Tabasco Sauce was used on Skylab by NASA to address astronauts' complaints about bland rations. Tabasco is often used in space, both on the International Space Station and during shuttle missions.
[edit] References
- ^ Shane K. Bernard, "Tabasco: Edmund McIlhenny and the Birth of a Louisiana Pepper Sauce," Louisiana Cultural Vistas (Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities publication), Fall 2005.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles lacking sources from February 2007 | All articles lacking sources | 1868 establishments | Hot sauces | Louisiana cuisine | Military food of the United States | Companies based in Louisiana
