Tabasco sauce is the brand name for a hot sauce produced by US-based McIlhenny Company of Avery Island, Louisiana.[1] Tabasco sauce is 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. McIlhenny Company is in its fifth generation as a family business, and all 145 shareholders inherited their stock or were given it by a living family member.[1]
| McIlhenny Company logo | |
| Company type | Private (family-owned) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Food processing |
| Founded | 1868 |
| Founder | Edmund McIlhenny |
| Headquarters | Avery Island, Louisiana, United States |
| Products | Pepper sauce and other condiments |
Number of employees | About 200 (2007) |
| Website | TABASCO.com |
History
Tabasco sauce was invented in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny, a Maryland-born former banker who had moved to Louisiana around 1840. Initially McIlhenny used discarded cologne bottles to distribute his sauce to family and friends, and in 1868 when he started to sell to the public he ordered thousands of new "cologne bottles" from a New Orleans glassworks. It was in these that the sauce was first commercially distributed. On his death in 1890, McIlhenny was succeeded by his eldest son, John Avery McIlhenny, who expanded and modernized the business, but resigned after a few years to join Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders volunteer cavalry regiment.[2]
On John's departure, brother Edward Avery McIlhenny, a self-taught naturalist fresh from an arctic adventure, assumed control of the company, running it from 1898 to his death in 1949. Like his brother, Edward focused on expansion and modernization, as did war veteran Walter S. McIlhenny, who, after serving in the U.S. Marines at Guadalcanal and elsewhere, oversaw the company until his death in 1985.
Paul C. P. McIlhenny is the sixth in a line of McIlhenny men to run the business.
Production
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Until recently, all peppers were grown on Avery Island. While a small portion of the crop is still grown there, the bulk of the crop is now grown in Central and South America, where the weather and the availability of farmland allow 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 (such as a hurricane). Regardless, all seeds are still grown on Avery Island.
Following company tradition, the peppers are handpicked. To determine ripeness, peppers are checked with a little red stick, or le petit bâton rouge, that each worker carries. Those peppers not matching the color of the stick are not harvested. Peppers are ground into "mash" the same day they are harvested, placed in white oak barrels (aging barrels previously used for bourbon whiskey) with salt, and sent to warehouses on Avery Island for a three-year aging process. At the end of the aging, the mash is drained to remove skins and seeds from the liquid. This liquid is mixed with vinegar and stirred intermittently for a month before being bottled as finished sauce.[3] Much of the salt used in Tabasco production is acquired locally from Avery Island's own salt mine, one of the largest in the U.S.
Avery Island was hit hard by tropical storms in 2005, especially Hurricane Rita. The factory barely escaped major damage.[3] As a result of a long history of dodging tropical storms, the family constructed a 17-foot (5.2 m)-high levee and invested in back-up generators.
Varieties
Several sauces are produced under the name Tabasco Sauce, including jalapeño-based green, chipotle-based smoked, habanero, garlic, and "sweet and spicy" sauces.
The habanero sauce and garlic sauces include the tabasco peppers blended with other peppers, whereas the jalapeño variety does not include tabasco peppers. None of these has the three-year aging process the flagship product uses.
In the spring of 2011, a new flavor started being marketed under the brand "Buffalo Style".
Spiciness
| Tabasco sauce | |
|---|---|
| Heat | Medium (SR: 2,500–5,000) |
The original red variety of Tabasco pepper sauce measures 2,500–5,000 SCU on the Scoville scale. The habanero sauce is considerably hotter, rating 7,000–8,000 Scoville units. The chipotle sauce adds chipotle pepper to the original sauce, measuring 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. The Sweet and Spicy sauce is the mildest at only 100-600 Scoville units.
Packaging
Tabasco brand pepper sauce is sold in more than 160 countries and territories and is packaged in 22 languages and dialects. As many as 720,000 two-ounce (57 ml) bottles of Tabasco[1] sauce are produced daily at the Tabasco factory on Avery Island, Louisiana. Bottles range from the common two-ounce and five-ounce (57 ml and 148 ml) bottles, up to a one US gallon (3.8 liter) jug for food service businesses, and down to a 1/8-ounce (3.7 ml) miniature bottle. The US military has included Tabasco sauce in Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MREs) since the 1980s.
Uses
McIlhenny Company produces Tabasco brand products that contain pepper seasoning, including popcorn, nuts, olives, mayonnaise, mustard, steak sauce, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, marinating sauce, barbecue 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 (a common marketing practice called "co-branding"), including Spam, Slim Jim beef sticks, Heinz ketchup, A1 steak sauce, Plochman's mustard, Cheez-It crackers, Lawry's salt, Zapp's potato chips and Vlasic pickles.
The original red Tabasco sauce has a shelf life of five years when stored in a cool and dry place; other Tabasco flavors have shorter shelf lives.
During the Vietnam War, BGen. McIlhenny issued The Charlie Ration Cookbook.[4] (Charlie ration was 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 meals as "Combat Canapés" or "Breast of Chicken under Bullets."[5]
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. (These same miniature bottles are also included in vegetarian British rations, but are not included in the regular Operational Ration Pack.) During the same period, McIlhenny Company issued a new military-oriented cookbook using characters from the comic strip Beetle Bailey, titled The Unofficial MRE Cookbook, which it offered free of charge to U.S. troops
Tabasco appears on the menu of NASA's space shuttle program and has gone into orbit on the shuttles.[5] It was on Skylab and on the International Space Station.
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c Shevory 2007, p. B1
- ^ The Economist, "Tabasco island: Some like it Avery hot", 26 March 2011, p. 40.
- ^ a b Shevory 2007, pp. B1–B4
- ^ The Charlie Ration Cookbook
- ^ a b Edwards, Bob (2002-11-29). "TABASCO's Hot History". National Public Radio. Retrieved 2008-06-07.
References
- Shevory, Kristina (2007-03-31), The Fiery Family, The New York Times, retrieved 2008-06-07.
- Kurlansky, Mark (2002), Salt: A World History, Walker & Company, ISBN 0802713734.
External links
