[CH] Baton Rouge, Louisiana

R.Solarion - Apollonius.Net (damis@apollonius.net)
Mon, 3 Jul 2000 15:41:25 -0600 

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The Dallas Morning News, 2 July 2000

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TABASCO SAUCE

Tabasco Sauce has gone into combat with the U.S. military and into space
with the astronauts.  The bottles of red pepper sauce sit on the tables of
presidents and royalty.  It is sprinkled on eggs, on meat loaf, on
vegetables, even added to liquid libations.  But sprinkle gently -- it
doesn't take much.  Those little bottles of red can be found around the
world, yet it is produced in just one place : on top of a salt dome called
Avery Island in rural Iberia Parish, 140 miles west of New Orleans,
Louisiana.  Its creator, Edmund McIlhenny, came up with the recipe between
1866 and 1868 and reportedly first sold it in small cologne bottles, sealed
with green wax.  He obtained a patent for his formula for making peppers
into hot sauce in 1870.  Tabasco Sauce, as McIlhenny called it, was a hit
with Americans and by the end of the decade was being exported to Europe.

For more than a hundred years, McIlhenny's descendants have supervised the
planting and harvesting of the capsicum peppers used to make the fiery
potion.  Workers mash the ripe peppers with salt and let them ferment for
three years in oak barrels.  The process has changed little.  When a family
member determines that the mash has reached the right color, texture and
aroma, vinegar is added.  The solution is stirred with wooden paddles for a
month, then strained, bottled and shipped to more than one hundred
countries.  Its distinctive label is printed in twenty languages.  No
matter the language, Tabasco means hot.

Pepper pickers harvest the Capsicum frutescens peppers used in Tabasco
Sauce when they are at their peak of ripeness.  They match the peppers on
the bushes to the color on a painted stick or "baton rouge" which is the
shade of a perfectly ripe pepper.  This system means each plant is picked
several times during the harvest, as each pepper changes from green to
yellow to orange then bright red.