Whoever messes with it gets pricked (the tongue)

Name: Tabasco

Date of birth: 1868

Place of birth: Avery Island, Louisiana

Origin:

It would have been perfect if the story began with only a single version of its origin. But like many success stories, Tabasco is not immune to historical contradictions. 1849: Maunsel White, a plantation owner in New Orleans, was a great lover of cooking. At the large dinners he hosted, one of the staples on his table was a sauce of his invention, made from the Tabasco pepper, native to the Mexican state of the same name. What happened next? He is said to have given seeds before his death to his friend the banker Edmund McIlhenny (the creator of the Tabasco we know today). But other versions claim that it was a traveler who gave Mcllhenny the pepper while he was in New Orleans after the Civil War. The rest is unanimous: in 1868, the businessman returned to Avery Island to plant the seeds. The fruits ripen bright red and he decides to make a sauce to liven up the bland post-war Southern cuisine. He distributes the sauce in unused cologne bottles from a local glass supplier. Sealed with wax, the sauce then drips drop by drop into dishes. He names it Tabasco, referring to the pepper that composes it and to a Native American word meaning 'the place where the soil is wet'. He patents it in 1870: by the end of the year, it already takes the United States and all of Europe by storm. 

Production : 

 You might think a sauce as globalized as this is entirely industrial. Not quite. Five generations of direct descendants of McIlhenny keep alive the tradition of making Tabasco and for 158 years the method has barely changed. The recipe still comes down to three ingredients and most of the work (from harvesting the peppers to barreling them)  remains largely manual. Modernization has come for bottling, shipping and marketing.

How does it work? The mother seeds of Tabasco peppers are grown in Louisiana. The best are then sent to Latin America and Africa to expand cultivation. When mature, the peppers are pureed with salt and this mixture is sent back to its motherland: Avery Island.

Then, 3 key steps. ONE : the purée is placed in wooden barrels (old whiskey barrels!) with a sealed lid and then covered with the island's salt (to avoid oxygen or light). 

TWO : The sole deviation from the basic fermentation process, which took 30 days, is that Tabasco is aged for 3 years in the barrels. 

THREE : The resulting lacto-fermented purée is mixed with vinegar for 30 days, filtered, tested and bottled (adopting the iconic shape of the 1868 Eau de Cologne bottle). 

 Some surprising figures: the labels are translated into 22 languages, shipped to 180 different countries and in his lifetime, Edmund McIlhenny made 350,000 bottles of sauce. The factory today produces about 700,000…per day ! 

Fun fact : 

The company maintains close ties with the U.S. military. One year after U.S. troops entered Vietnam, the former president of the McIlhenny Company published The Charlie Ration Cookbook: a cookbook that advised soldiers to liven up their C rations with… Tabasco. These cookbooks were actually shipped to thousands of American soldiers, accompanied by bottles of the famous sauce. Another established fact: Tabasco was on archaeologist Howard Carter's table when he was about to discover the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. And since 2009 it has held a royal warrant from.. Her Majesty the Queen of England. 

The sauce, of course, comes with urban legends: most astronauts are fans of it, and in the Himalayas, climbers who scaled Everest rewarded their Sherpa guides with bottles of Tabasco…

Pop culture and Tabasco : 

Beyond more or less verified stories, the red sauce has slipped into several cult references of pop culture. It appears as a comic prop in Charlie Chaplin's silent film The Immigrant (1917), and in the James Bond films The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). In Back to the Future, it makes up the wake up juice that a hungover character is destined to drink.

For several years hot sauces have been multiplied endlessly: artisanal, fusion, slick labels, specialty shops, more adventurous on the flavor side… Not to mention Hot Ones, the show that sets guests' palates on fire as they're forced to answer questions under heat. But as a pioneering reference that has survived fashions without giving up its essentials, Tabasco will always be Tabasco!