The trademarked name for a hot sauce made from chile peppers, vinegar and salt, formulated on Avery Island off Louisiana's Gulf Coast, where New Orleans banker Edmund McIlhenny fled with his wife, Mary (née Avery), when Union troops entered the city in 1862. They settled on his in-laws' 2,500-acre island, where the Avery family operated America's first salt mine (salt was essential for preserving the meat that fed the Confederate troops). Union forces took over the island in 1863, and the McIlhennys escaped to Texas. When they returned in 1865, they found their plantation ruined and their mansion ransacked. Nothing much remained but a crop of cayenne peppers (Capsicum frutescens). McIlhenny crushed the peppers and mixed them with vinegar and salt, aged the mixture for a few days in wooden barrels, drained off the liquid and put the resulting piquant sauce in empty bottles. Encouraged by the response of friends, he produced 350 bottles for Southern merchants and, the next year, sold several thousand at a dollar apiece, starting a business in Cajun Tabasco sauce, which would continue its popularity as a condiment for generations.
Nothing major has changed since Tabasco was first made. Nowadays, the peppers used in the manufacture of this famous hot sauce are the Capsicum annum and the Capsicum frutescens varieties, originally from the Tabasco region of Mexico. The peppers are harvested by hand, ground to a pulp and packed into oak barrels with salt. The pulp is left to mature for more than three years before being mixed with distilled vinegar. The seeds and skins are removed by machine, and the finished product - a thin, fiery sauce - is bottled. It has a long shelf life and, like Worcestershire sauce, is used in a great number of recipes, as well as in cocktails, such as the Bloody Mary.
