A couple of weeks ago I talked to the owner of B.B. Ques about doing a blog post on the history of Hot Sauces. Seemed like a great idea as we sell over 150 hot sauces on our site. With the owner’s approval, I started my research. Not to sound like Captain Obvious here but there is a large number of articles on the internet about this subject! With that in mind, I will keep this to a brief history of hot sauce.

What is hot sauce? For the most part in the simplest terms, the base is salt, vinegar and chili peppers. Chili peppers are part of the genus plant Capsicum that contains the agent capsaicin. In turn, Capsaicin is an irritant that creates the burning sensation when human tissue meets it. In small amounts, it produces the zing that we find in hot sauces. Chili peppers are also very healthy containing a lot of Vitamin C more than what an orange has. It also has more Vitamin A than a carrot.

 How long has hot sauce been around, according to much of what I have read and learned hot sauce goes back at least to 7000 BC and the Aztec empire. The Aztecs used chili peppers and water for cooking, medicine and warfare. Hot sauce in the United States goes back roughly 200 years ago. Chili peppers are native to the America’s and spread throughout the continent through birds. With the arrival of Christopher Columbus, the chili pepper went global and now many parts of the world have developed their own spicy versions.

Around 1807, the first bottle of cayenne sauce appeared in Massachusetts 1807. Around the 1840s, the first seeds of Tabasco pepper made their way in America from Mexico. In addition, in 1849, the first recorded plantation of Tabasco Chilis was in New Orleans owned by Colonel Maunsell White. He started bottling and selling hot sauces made of chili peppers – a brand of which his descendants still manufacture today. Edward McIlhenny got seeds from White and started to grow peppers in Louisiana where he started his Tabasco sauce and paved the way for the growth of hot sauce in America.

How to determine what is hot? The answer to the question is the Scoville scale. The Scoville scale is a measurement of the pungency (spiciness or "heat") of chili peppers, as recorded in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), based on the concentration of capsaicinoids, among which capsaicin is the predominant component.

 After researching the history of hot sauce, I wondered just what goes good with hot sauce. I did a quick google search and the answer seems to be anything you want to put hot sauce on! From eggs and pancakes to popcorn, veggies, ice cream and beer just to name a few. The truth is use your hot sauce in just about anything you want! There is a saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. I am saying a bit of hot sauce today keeps the doctor at bay! At B.B. Ques, hot sauce is one of our biggest sellers. We try to find new tasty hot sauces on a regular basis always looking for the best tastiest sauces we can offer at every heat level when can find!

 Shop over 150 hot sauces on our website www.bbquestore.com!

Enjoy your visit!