Hot Chili Pepper Sauce Blog

Musing from the Hot Sauce of the Month Gift Club
@ ofTheMonthShop.com

Where did Hot Pepper Sauce come from?

Though it may be popular in the majority of people’s diets with many people becoming positively dependent on it, hot sauce still has some fairly large misconceptions about where the sauce originated from with some believing it arrived from Asian countries like India and others believing that it started its life in the America’s in places like Mexico or maybe the Deep South of USA. These areas are relatively famous because of their spicy take on food.  Even so, the questions still remains where did hot sauce actually originate from?

Many people make the case that Mexico may be the true home and birth place of present day hot pepper sauce especially since Mexican cuisine is renowned for its bite and spice. Lots of the recipes in their dishes need a splash of hot chili sauce. Mexico might be the birth place of certain hot sauces such as the more flavoursome types such as chipolata heavy sauces that give a uniquely individual flavour. You can find some evidence to indicate that The Aztecs living in Southern Mexico were utilizing a form of hot sauce going back to around 7000BC, however rather than applying this “sauce” for food purposes the tribe were utilizing it to be a variation of medication thus meaning that the modern day hot sauce intended for everyday consumption was not from Mexico.


Another misconception that surrounds people’s idea about the birth place of hot sauces is that they were invented and marketed first in India before becoming popular worldwide, however, once again there’s an argument against the fact that the modern day hot sauces we enjoy today were not technically produced by this area. It happens to be widely believed for example that Columbus brought peppers and chillies to Europe and India where then they proceeded to become highly popular because of their unique and extraordinary flavours at that time. A lot of people enjoyed the spicy tastes of this foreign food and began adding it to some variety of foods and above all sauces. However there is no evidence to prove that folks around these areas or time developed a unique sauce out of the peppers instead they added the peppers into the sauce to add a kick which means the hot sauce that we know and love today was not invented within these areas either.

However an area that can lay the best claim to be the home of the hot sauce is the USA itself with most of evidence pointing that the hot sauce was produced (in large quantities) there first with a little help from Britain! In the early 1800’s The British Lea and Perrins Company released a sauce which is still available to this date, Worcestershire Sauce, which came to USA in 1849, this sauce was to have a large influence over the history of the modern day hot sauce because of its vast popularity!

It had been a guy named Edmund McIllhenny who started the cogs in the hot sauce machine rolling with his affinity for gardening blooming he went about getting his hands on some rare pepper seeds to raise on Avery Island near New Orleans. Enjoying the unique taste belonging to the peppers and seeing the prosperity of the Worcestershire Sauce, he aimed to generate a sauce based from his peppers. In 1868 he succeeded in his quest and made what can be considered the first true modern hot sauce which nearly all people still know and love today, Tabasco Sauce named after the town that Edmund was living in at the time. It was from the success of Tabasco that numerous other imitators stemming from the Deep South of America started to pop up including Trappey’s Hot Sauce who had previously been an employee of Edmund.

There while a good many areas could very well lay claim to having hot sauce originate from it the true area that can lay the best claim due to the fact that the process and ingredients remain used to this date in sauces is not Mexico nor Asia but The United States of America!

Like Hot Sauces try our Gourmet Hot Sauce of the Month Club at ofTheMonthShop.com. Visit ofTheMonthShop.com’s Hot Sauce of the Month Gift Club for more info.