I actually buy Tabasco Sauce by the gallon. No fooling, you can have it delivered to your door from the Avery Island manufacturing plant where Tabasco is created. Admittedly, Tabasco isn’t the hottest hot sauce in the land-it’s certainly nowhere near as high up the Scoville heat scale as Dave’s Insanity Sauce or The Source, but what it lacks in pure, eye-watering intensity it makes up for in flavor. Of course, Tabasco can also be used to flavor every food known to man: I prefer it on pizza, mixed with Heinz 57 for meat and chicken dipping, and to add much-needed pizzazz to fried eggs. And on that subject, if you haven’t tried adding Tabasco Sauce to the pan when you fry foods, you are not only missing out on delicious seasoning but a fine aroma permeating your residence.
The history of Tabasco Sauce goes back to the Civil War when a Confederate loyalist banker named Edmund McIlhenny returned back to his family’s plantation on Avery Island after running screaming like Ned Flanders when Union troops arrived in the Big Easy in 1862. Sure enough, the big bad Union troops had run through his plantation just like they did Tara in Gone with the Wind and McIlhenny found he had to turn to something besides mining salt to retrieve his fortune. About the only thing the soldiers hadn’t plundered were some hot peppers. Now, Edmund McIlhenny was far from a stupid man and he was not exactly lacking in ambition, either. He settled his mind down to working out some way get rich using those hot peppers. You have to understand that Avery Island is an island that is really more like a huge salt lick. What I’m trying to say is that there’s a lot of salt on Avery Island. A lot. And so McIlhenny crushed his red peppers and proceeded to mix them with salt and then let the result age for a month. Tabasco Sauce was officially born in 1868 when Edmund McIlhenny strained his new brand of hot flavoring into several cologne bottles and shared them with his friends.
Tabasco Sauce may seem like one of those all-America products, but actually it is enjoyed almost as much in England. Lord Kitchener enjoyed Tabasco Sauce so much, in fact, that he made sure his troops were provided with copious amounts even during the invasion of the Sudan and the battle of Khartoum. Later, during the 30s when Great Britain was on one of their isolationist kicks, Tabasco Sauce became one of the strangest victims of the move. Even though McIlhenny had grown stinking rich partly as a result of importing Tabasco Sauce to England since way back in 1868, the decision was made to ban its import in 1932. The ban might very well have been successful if it hadn’t been for one of one of the idiosyncrasies of capitalism: there is no law that can’t be circumvented if there are rich consumers affected. You see, Tabasco Sauce had not only been popular among the filth of England, but it was a mainstay on the tables of MP dining inside the House of the Commons. Several members of Parliament stepped up to the plate to demand that the ban on Tabasco Sauce be lifted. So profound was this event in British history that it is actually referred to as the Tabasco Tempest, believe it or don’t. In the end, of course, the ban was lifted and that is why even Queen Elizabeth has been seen more than a few times with a bottle of Tabasco by her plate.
As delicious as Tabasco Sauce may make the Queen’s lobster bisque, it is also useful for non-flavoring purposes as well. For instance, the next time you’ve got a toothache, upend a bottle of Tabasco and release a drop onto your finger, put your finger into your mouth and massage the area causing the pain. If all goes well, your toothache should subside fairly quickly. Just remember to wash your finger off before you get it anywhere near your eye.
If you’ve got feline trouble such as stray cats hanging around your house or coming to sniff out your pet and you want to send them packing, trying pouring Tabasco Sauce into a sponge and rubbing briskly around any area where you don’t want a cat. The aroma of the red pepper in the Tabasco Sauce is one that most cats do not care for it at all and it acts like a shark repellant…for cats.
Tabasco Sauce is perhaps the closest thing we have for curing the common cold. Okay, Tabasco won’t really cure the common cold, but if you mix a health amount with tomato juice or orange juice a few times a day, you’ll be amazed at how quickly it acts as decongestant. Before you know it you’ll be breathing and smelling like never before.
