Tabasco Sauce

Tabasco pepper sauce is named after the “Free and Sovereign State of Tabasco,” in Mexico. The TABASCO BRAND website says that “Tabasco” is “a word of Mexican Indian origin believed to mean ‘place where the soil is humid’ or ‘place of the coral or oyster shell.’”
 
“Tabasco pepper” was printed in the Courrier De La Louisiane (New Orleans, LA) on February 25, 1818. “Tobasco pepper” was printed in the Louisiana Gazette (New Orleans, LA) on March 15, 1819.
 
Maunsel White (1783-1863), of New Orleans, Louisiana, made the first Tabasco pepper sauce. “I must not omit to notice the Colonel’s pepper patch, which is two acres in extent, all planted with a new species of red pepper, which Colonel White has introduced into the country, called the Tobasco red pepper” was printed in the Daily Delta (New Orleans, LA) on December 7, 1849. “Owing to its oleaginous character, Colonel White found it impossible to preserve it by drying; but by pouring strong vinegar on it after boiling, he has made a sauce or pepper decoction of it, which possesses in a most concentrated and intense form all the qualities of the vegetable” was printed in the Daily Delta (New Orleans, LA) on January 26, 1860. “Tobasco Pepper Sauce. 3 cases of this popular SAUCE, made pure and fresh, on the plantation of Col. Mansel White” was printed in The Courier (New Orleans, LA) on February 10, 1860.
 
Edmund McIlhenny (1815-1890) trademarked “Tabasco” and based his company on Avery Island (near New Iberia), Louisiana, but Maunsel White clearly had the first commercial “Tabasco” sauce. “The Tabasco pepper and sauce display, manufactured by Mr. E. McInhenny, and exhibited by Messrs. W. H. Henning & Co., of 95 and 97 Camp street, was quite a tempting array” was printed in the New Orleans (LA) Times on April 8, 1869.
 
A version of Tabasco sauce history was printed in The Daily Iberian (New Iberia, LA) on September 26, 1952, and this does not mention Maunsel White:
 
“A soldier of fortune and friend of the McIlhenny family, named Gleason, stayed in Mexico after the Mexican War. On his return to the States, in 1852, he stopped to visit his friend, Edmund McIlhenny, a New Orleans banker. He presented Mr. McIlhenny with some pepper seeds from southern Mexico which he said would produce a choice pepper of unusually fine color and flavor. (...) Mr. McIlhenny began experimenting with the peppers and in 1865 developed the famous sauce which was to bear the name Tabasco.”
   
 
Wikipedia: Tabasco sauce
Tabasco is an American brand of hot sauce made from vinegar, tabasco peppers, and salt. It is produced by the McIlhenny Company of Avery Island in southern Louisiana, having been created in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny. Originally, the tabasco peppers were grown only on Avery Island; they are now primarily cultivated in Central America, South America, and Africa. The Tabasco sauce brand also has multiple varieties, including the original red sauce, habanero, jalapeño, chipotle, sriracha, and scorpion. Tabasco products are sold in more than 195 countries and territories, and packaged in 36 languages and dialects.
 
History
According to the company’s official history, Tabasco was first produced in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny, a Maryland-born former banker who had moved to Louisiana around 1840. However, as Jeffrey Rothfeder’s book McIlhenny’s Gold points out, some of the McIlhenny Company’s official history is disputed, and the politician Maunsel White was producing a tabasco pepper sauce two decades before McIlhenny.
   
Wikipedia: Maunsel White
Maunsel White (c. 1783 – December 17, 1863) was an Irish-born American slave owner, Episcopalian politician, merchant, and entrepreneur. He is remembered for promoting the use of peppers and peppery sauces—a brand of which his descendants still manufacture today.
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An 1850 New Orleans Daily Delta newspaper article (reprinted in several other sources at the time) noted that “Col. White has introduced the celebrated tobasco [sic] red pepper, the very strongest of all peppers, of which he has cultivated a large quantity with the view of supplying his neighbors, and diffusing it through the state.” Furthermore, observed the newspaper, “by pouring strong vinegar on it after boiling, he has made a sauce or pepper decoction of it, which possesses in a most concentrated form all the qualities of the vegetable. A single drop of this sauce will flavor a whole plate of soup or other food.”
 
Although White never marketed this pepper sauce, his heirs advertised it for sale beginning in 1864, a year after White’s death (as “Maunsel White’s Concentrated Essence of Tobasco [sic] Pepper”).
 
Wikipedia: Edmund McIlhenny
Edmund McIlhenny (/ˈmækəlhɛni/; 1815 – 25 November 1890) was an American businessman and manufacturer who founded the McIlhenny Company, which was the first to mass produce Tabasco sauce. While company legend attributes the invention of the sauce to McIlhenny, plantation owner Maunsel White is said by some to have been the first to cultivate and make a sauce from tabasco peppers in the United States, and gave the recipe and pepper pods to his friend McIlhenny.
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Tabasco sauce
According to one legend, McIlhenny was given tabasco peppers and a recipe for tabasco sauce by a friend, plantation owner Maunsel White, who died in 1863 – though company legend says McIlhenny himself invented the sauce between 1866 and 1868. In 1868, he grew his first commercial pepper crop, selling the first bottles of his product the following year, which he called Tabasco brand pepper sauce.
 
TABASCO BRAND
THE HISTORY OF TABASCO BRAND
“That Famous Sauce Mr. McIlhenny Makes”
McIlhenny grew his first commercial pepper crop in 1868. The next year, he sent out 658 bottles of sauce at one dollar apiece wholesale to grocers around the Gulf Coast, particularly in New Orleans. He labeled it “Tabasco,” a word of Mexican Indian origin believed to mean “place where the soil is humid” or “place of the coral or oyster shell.” McIlhenny secured a patent in 1870, and TABASCO® Sauce began its journey to set the culinary world on fire. Sales grew, and by the late 1870s, he sold his sauce throughout the U.S. and even in Europe.
 
Newspapers.com
25 February 1818, Courrier De La Louisiane (New Orleans, LA), pg. 3, col. 3:
40 bags Tabasco pepper
 
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15 March 1819, Louisiana Gazette (New Orleans, LA), pg. 2, col. 3:
Tobasco pepper
 
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7 December 1849, Daily Delta (New Orleans, LA), “Deer Range—A Model Sugar Plantation,” pg. 2, col. 4:
I must not omit to notice the Colonel’s pepper patch, which is two acres in extent, all planted with a new species of red pepper, which Colonel White has introduced into the country, called the Tobasco red pepper. The Colonel attributes the admirable health of his hands to the free use of this pepper.
 
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26 January 1850, Daily Delta (New Orleans, LA), “Pepper,” pg. 2, coll. 2:
Col. White has introduced into the State the celebrated Tobasco red pepper, the very strongest of all peppers—of which he has cultivated a large quantity, with a view of supplying his neighbors and diffusing it through the State. The Tobasco pepper yields a small red pod, less than an inch in length, and longitudinal in shape. It is exceedingly hot, and but a small quantity of it is sufficient to pepper a large dish of any food. Owing to its oleaginous character, Colonel White found it impossible to preserve it by drying; but by pouring strong vinegar on it after boiling, he has made a sauce or pepper decoction of it, which possesses in a most concentrated and intense form all the qualities of the vegetable. A single drop of this sauce will flavor a whole plate of soup or other food. The use of a decoction like this, particularly in preparing the food for laboring persons, would be found exceedingly beneficial in a relaxing climate like this. Colonel White has not had a single case of cholera among his large gang of negroes, since that disease appeared in this State. He attributes this to the free use of this valuable agent.
 
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10 February 1860, The Courier (New Orleans, LA), pg. 2, col. 4:
Tobasco Pepper Sauce.
3 cases of this popular SAUCE, made pure and fresh, on the plantation of Col. Mansel White.
BULLITT & WHALEY,
30 and 32 New Levee Streets.
 
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19 October 1860, The Daily Delta (New Orleans, LA), pg. 4, col. 1:
... in the case of the Woodville journal, approaches the pungency of Colonel Maunsel White’s celebrated decoction of Tobasco pepper.
 
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26 November 1864, The Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), pg. 3, col. 2:
Amateurs, Connoisseurs, and Bon Vivants
Attention!
MAUNSEL WHITE’S CONCENTRATED ESSENSE OF TABASCO PEPPER.
THE undersigned has just received a consignment of the above celebrated PEPPER SAUCE, which he offers to the public at reduced price.
E. MONTEUSE.
Successor to Hugh Kennedy, Wholesale Druggist,
Corner Chartres and Bienville street
 
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8 April 1869, New Orleans (LA) Times, pg. 1, col. 6:
The Tabasco pepper and sauce display, manufactured by Mr. E. McInhenny, and exhibited by Messrs. W. H. Henning & Co., of 95 and 97 Camp street, was quite a tempting array. Messrs. E/ J. Hart & Co., of Nos. 73, 75 and 77 Tchoupitoulas street, showed between fifty and sixty different varieties of fancy crackers. They were manufactured in London. 
 
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25 December 1869, Opelousas (LA) Journal, pg. 2, col. 1:
MR. JOHN POSEY, Druggist, Opelousas, has for sale a new table sauce—Tabasco Sauce—manufactured at Petit Anse (Avery’s Island) by Mr. McIlheny. It is an excellent article. We recommend it to all gastronomers.
 
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8 April 1869, The Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), pg. 2, col. 3:
There is a fine display of Tabasco pepper, and sauce, grown and prepared by E. McIllenny, Louisiana, and placed on exhibition by Messrs. W. H. Henning & Co., agents, 95 and 97 Camp street. These preparations are said to be finer than the celebrated “Maunsell White.”
 
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20 May 1870, The Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), pg. 4, col. 3:
McIlhenny’s Tabasco pepper sauce is, on account of its many superior qualities, used very extensively at public places as well as in families.
 
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20 May 1870, New Orleans (LA) Times, pg. 5, col. 2:
McILHENNY’S TABASCO PEPPER SAUCE
(...)
W. H. HENNING & CO.
Agents, 95 and 97 Camp street
 
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21 March 1889, Pulaski (TN) Citizen, pg. 4, col. 3:
Tabasco Pepper Sauce.
Commenting upon the large amount of pepper sauce or vinegar sold in our shops, nearly all of which is bottled at the North, where the red pepper plant is an exotic, the following paragraph appeared in a late number of the Times-Democrat:
 
With the exception of the well-known extract of pepper, popularly called “Maunsel White,” no pepper is bottled for commercial purposes either in New Orleans or Louisiana.  It seems, however, that Mr. E. McIlhenny, of New Iberia, La., is largely engaged in the manufacture of the extract of Tabasco pepper, a sample of which has been received in good order, and is very creditable to the manufacturer.
 
In connection with this subject and others of like character the thought is suggested that our Southern people are prone to despise such small things as the manufacture of pepper sauces or vinegar which is done with so much profit elsewhere. And it is the same with many other article we might mention. These smaller industries are often the most profitable.
 
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26 September 1952, The Daily Iberian (New Iberia, LA), pg. 84 (?), cols. 1-5:
Tabasco’s Place in 150-Year-Old Island Empire
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A soldier of fortune and friend of the McIlhenny family, named Gleason, stayed in Mexico after the Mexican War. On his return to the States, in 1852, he stopped to visit his friend, Edmund McIlhenny, a New Orleans banker. He presented Mr. McIlhenny with some pepper seeds from southern Mexico which he said would produce a choice pepper of unusually fine color and flavor.
(...)
Mr. McIlhenny began experimenting with the peppers and in 1865 developed the famous sauce which was to bear the name Tabasco.
(...)
It was in 1868 that Edmund McIlhenny registered and patented the Tabasco sauce name that was to make the family and product names known around the world.
 
Newspapers.com
8 February 2001, The Daily Iberian (New Iberia, LA), “Tabasco’s home bas is almost as popular as the sauce itself” by Jennifer E. May, Newcomers Guide, pg. 24, cols.  1-4:
(McIlhenny company timeline.—ed.)