For Bobby Bare, she relieved the greatest need. In his song “Warm And Free,” off the ’75 LP Hard Times Hungrys, his bottomless lyrical self stumbles into an all-night cafe, grabs a dirty mug lying around, fills it with hot water from the boiler, and pours it out some ketchup, salt and Tabasco in it.
“Sure smells good to me.” Not only him, because for almost 150 years there has been a bottle of Tabasco on every American table. For Charlie Chaplin’s “The Immigrant” in 1917 it was practically the first contact with the American way of life. Since then, it has appeared in countless films as well as popular music, especially hip-hop, where, as a Duke University study points out, “stin went like” and “hotter than Tabasco” have become standing phrases.
In this country, Tabasco unfolds its effect more in secret and privately. Although Germany is the second largest importer after Japan with around three million bottles a year, these are rarely seen in public. And among acquaintances with an affinity for pleasure, it usually ranks somewhere between curry ketchup and maggi on the popularity scale.
which is unfair. A mass product can hardly be manufactured more sustainably. Because the sauce that the former banker and financial agent of the Confederate Army, ruined by the civil war, Edmund McIlhenny brewed for the first time in 1868 on Avery Island, two hours west of New Orleans, and named it after the Mexican state, is not only still made according to the original recipe , it also consists exclusively of organically grown ingredients. Essentially, these are chillies, vinegar, water and salt as well as a few herbs.
The seeds are still grown on the island and then shipped to Mexico where the Tabasco chilies are ripened. The salt comes from the mines under Avery Island, the water from wells. The mash is stored in disused bourbon barrels for three years before the medium-hot sauce is filled into the famous small bottles, whereby the whole production process is more reminiscent of that of wine, sherry or high-quality vinegar.
To this day, there is a debate about who made the Tabasco recipe
Theoretically, you could even look at the recipe, but as one of McIlhenny’s descendants once revealed to the “FAZ”, nobody would probably be able to decipher his great-great-grandfather’s handwriting. It is still disputed whether the recipe came from him. Colonel Maunsel White, who rose from Irish immigration to plantation owner and slave owner, is said to have served his friend, later President Andrew Jackson, with the chili sauce he had created himself on the occasion of the victory over the British in 1812. At least that’s what White’s descendants claim.
It is undisputed, however, that White, as a note in the New Orleans newspaper “The Daily Delta” proves, sold a chili sauce himself around 1850 and gave a bag of chilli seeds to his war comrade who went bankrupt after the Civil War. Whether he also revealed the recipe to him and whether it might not have originally come from Mexico or from White’s slaves will forever remain in the dark.
However, the other flavors that the company has had in store for its increasingly diverse clientele since 1993 not only vary their own mix, but also make hearty use of classics of the genre. The original Buffalo Pepper Sauce was invented by Teressa Bellissimo in 1964 in the Anchor Bar in Buffalo/New York, which she poured over the chicken wings of her son and his friends late in the evening.
More columns by Gunter Blank
The Sriracha sauce takes cues from Asia, and the habanero and chipotle-based sauces are clearly Mexican in origin. Nevertheless, the author does not want to speak of “cultural appropriation”, but thinks that the chipotle sauce in particular deserves a place in the Olympus of chili sauces. Although rather mild at 1500 to 2500 Scoville, its fruity, smoky aroma turns almost anything pan-fried into a delicacy.