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The Numbers |
42 Number of years that two Texas brothers, ages 63 and 65, have been mailing each other the same recycled birthday card
15¢ Price of the card when it was bought in 1964, when it cost just a nickel to mail. |
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Hot Recipes |
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Original Buffalo Wings Recipe |
- 2 1/2 lb. fresh chicken wings (12-16 whole wings)
- 1/2 cup Original Anchor Bar Sauce
If preferred, split wings at joint, pat dry. Deep fry at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes, or bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes until completely cooked and crispy; drain. Put in a bowl, add sauce and toss until wings are completely covered. Serve with bleu cheese and celery. |
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Hot sauces have been around since humans first realized they could eat peppers. Bottles containing hot sauce have been recovered from archaeological digs as well as shipwrecks, according to Dave DeWitt and Chuck Evans, authors of “The Hot Sauce Bible,” The Crossing Press, 1996.
Advertisements for cayenne sauces appeared in Massachusetts newspapers and city directories as early as 1807, according to some reports. Sometime between 1840 and 1860, J. McCollick & Company of New York produced a Bird Pepper Sauce, most likely made with wild chiles called chiltepins, or bird peppers. In 1849, England’s Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce was first imported into the United States from Great Britain.
Many of the first homegrown hot sauces in the United States came from the South. Cajun cuisine and other fiery ethnic foods fueled the drive to make hot sauces.
One of the first mass manufactured domestic hot sauces was Edmund McIlhenny’s Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce in 1849. Colonel Maunsell White, a prominent Louisiana banker and legislator, grew the crop on his Deer Range Plantation. In 1859, White manufactured, bottled and advertised the first hot sauce from these chiles; at about this time, he gave some chiles and his sauce recipe to a friend, Edmund McIlhenny, who promptly planted the seeds on his plantation on Avery Island, LA. According to McIlhenny “family lore,” In 1868, Edmund first bottled his Tabasco® sauce in recycled cologne bottles. The McIlhenny Company has trademarked “Tabasco,” which is why it’s the only Tabasco sauce on the market today. (Although it is trademarked by McIlhenny, Tabasco actual refers to a geographic and political region in Mexico – where the Tabasco pepper was said to originate.) Similar sauces can note they are made with Tabasco peppers, but can only be known at “hot sauce.” In addition, the McIlhenny Company is so proud of its heritage that it is opening a museum in 2006 in New Orleans.
McIlhenny’s initial success also spawned a raft of imitators particularly in the roaring 1920s including Trappey’s Hot Sauce (made by B.F. Trappey, an ex-McIlhenny employee) as well as Crystal Hot Sauce, according to Linda Stradley’s Whatscookingamerica.com web site. Jacob Frank started selling Frank’sTM RedhotTM Cayenne Pepper Sauce in 1920 and it was this hot sauce that French’s, the current owner of Frank’s Redhot Cayenne Pepper Sauce, proclaims as the “secret ingredient” in the original Buffalo Wings concocted in 1964 by Teresa Bellissimo at the Anchor Bar and Grill in Buffalo, NY. All three of these sauces are continued to be made and sold today.
Some hot sauces didn’t tickle the palate of consumers. Heinz, the condiment company based in Pittsburgh, produced a Tabasco Pepper sauce, but it failed to compete with McIlhenny’s original and was eventually taken out of production. Other early America hot sauces included a “Chilli Sauce” from E.R. Durkee & Company, which continues today as a spice and condiment company.
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Tidbits |
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The burning sensation from eating chile peppers is caused by a group of compounds called capsaicinoids. It is often simply called capsaicin. These compounds are concentrated in the white veins in the pepper that hold the seeds. The capsaicinoids in their pure form are a white, crystalline powder highly irritating to skin |
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