When Claude and I were still dating, and he saw a Tabasco bottle roll out from my little black bag, he laughed hard and could not believe I would rather keep a bottle of red Tabasco than a red lipstick inside my bag.
“You must be one hot lady,” he said.
I didn’t know just what he meant, with a matching silly grin on his face. But I said, “Yes, I do not leave home without it.”
On our next date, he gave me many miniature bottles of Tabasco. “For your convenience,” he said.
Today, Tabasco is a mainstay in our car’s glove compartment. Hubby, too, has developed a hot taste for it. Talk about osmosis.
You see, I grew up with Tabasco on our dining table. And I thought every household naturally has Tabasco, like having vinegar on the condiment tray. That little red bottle with a diamond label was part of my mom’s basic grocery list as far as I could remember.
Back in the ’60s, there were no supermarkets in our side of town, that is Mabalacat, Pampanga, and we had a choice of either the sari-sari stores or the PX stores in Dau and Angeles for our basic needs. (The first supermarket only came in the late ’90s.)
That is why we were exposed to American brands and all that junk at a very early age. And Tabasco is one American product that I have loved since I was a kid. I would sprinkle it on bistig baka, meatballs and even on siopao.
So, when hubby was invited to join 12 European writers and editors to explore New Orleans for five days, I was more excited than he. Not because he might bump into Brad and Angelina, but because one full day was reserved for a tour at the Tabasco plant.
Pardon me for bragging, but the millionaire Mcllhennys and I are of the same level. (Just read on.) It’s just that their money in the bank has more 0s than mine. In fact, many can bear witness to the fact that we are actually neighbors! Our bottled Claude’9 Xtra Ordinary Chili Sauce and their Tabasco lie side by side on many supermarket shelves. Certainly, they outsell us, but again just by more 0s. I learned in kindergarten that 0 virtually means none or nothing. So, I should not be intimidated by my rich neighbor, whose secret I very much wanted to know.
Here’s my rich neighbor’s interesting story:
Edmund McIlhenny owned five banks in New Orleans and was enjoying the life of a successful banker until he and his family had to flee because of the American Civil War in 1861. When he returned from Texas in 1865, he lost his banks, all his money, and failed to revive his banking career. But what he did not lose was his love for food. (He was said to have once, in a restaurant, commented: “I enjoyed this so much. I feel like starting all over again.” So he did; McIlhenny ate a second full-course dinner.)
His dislike for bland food led him to experiment with the peppers that he planted on his father-in-law’s 2,500-acre Avery Island for his own consumption. No one knows for certain how Edmund McIlhenny obtained those peppers. Though he kept meticulous records of almost everything, there was no record found on the origin of his peppers. Folklore or “fakelore,” however, has it that the peppers were given to McIlhenny by a soldier-friend who came back from the Mexican war.
In 1869, confident he had the right formula, he sent the first 350 bottles (using new cologne bottles) of his concoction to local wholesalers. He named it Tabasco, an Indian word meaning “land where the soil is humid.” It blended very well with the Cajun and Creole cooking. Years later, he exported it to Europe. It became a hit among the English who needed a kick to their bland food. (In fact, when they had the “Buy British” campaign in 1932, the members of Parliament protested when Tabasco was removed from their dining hall. The “Buy British” motto became “Buy Tabasco.”)
And yet when Edmund was interviewed about his life, he talked lengthily about his banks and did not mention his peppers. By his own yardstick, he did not consider his Tabasco enterprise to be a success. He ran the business for 22 years and was worth $14,000 when he died in 1890. He was certainly worth much, much more than that when he was a banker.
Today, 140 years later, the Tabasco factory he left behind can produce 750,000 bottles a day, double the quantity Edmund sold in 22 years. It employs a staff of 230 and sells over 159 million bottles of Tabasco yearly to 160 countries worldwide. What he did not consider a success is now the number one hot sauce in the world.
It is true some of Tabasco’s peppers are planted and harvested in Columbia, Honduras, and Venezuela because Avery Island’s land and laborers cannot cope with the demand for peppers. All the seeds, however, still come from Avery Island.
The Tabasco plant in Lafayette is open to the public. Peppers are patiently handpicked, as it was done 140 years ago, with every harvester using a le petit baton rouge (little red stick) as guide for that perfect red color. (Tabasco, unlike other pepper sauces, uses no food coloring.) They use only three simple ingredients: peppers, salt, and vinegar. But the mashed pepper and salt are fermented for three long years. After which, they check for three things: sight, aroma, and taste — three must be a lucky number for them — before the vinegar is blended in. They will, of course, not tell you what kind of peppers and vinegar they use. But Tabasco, I discovered, has one secret more important and worth emulating than their recipe.
The fifth generation of McIlhennys now successfully runs their still 100 percent family-owned Tabasco business. Now, that is really something. Most family corporations collapse with the third generation. CEO Paul McIlhenny joined us at the island picnic, and we shared a small table with him, his two cousins, and Theo, a Dutch chef/editor. We talked much about Philippine-American history. Like me, all the three McIlhennys dashed their boiled crayfish with lots of Tabasco.
Everyone I met inside and outside the plant was energetic, happy, and very proud to belong to the Tabasco family. They were equally proud of their people, their culture, and food. Not to notice the warm camaraderie among them is just impossible. It was, in fact, contagious. They happily go the extra mile in what they do, and that included how they entertained us. Those people don’t stand up; they jump. They don’t walk; they run. They don’t shake your hand; they shake your body. It must be the Tabasco in their diets that gives them the kick.
More than the Tabasco recipe, my rich neighbor’s best secret is its people.
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Comments of any kind are most welcome at maryann@digitelone.com.
