National Hot Sauce Day

The story

Hot sauce is a condiment made from chili peppers blended with vinegar, salt, and often fruit, garlic, or spices. Chilies were domesticated in the Americas thousands of years ago, and the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples mixed them with water and herbs to make early sauces. After Columbus, chili peppers spread rapidly around the world and became central to cuisines from Thailand to Ethiopia.

Bottled hot sauce has deep roots in the United States. Massachusetts records show cayenne sauces sold in the early 1800s, and in 1868 Edmund McIlhenny began making Tabasco on Avery Island, Louisiana, from aged peppers, vinegar, and salt. Louisiana-style sauces, Mexican-style salsas picantes, and Sriracha, popularized in the US by Huy Fong Foods starting in 1980, all have devoted fans.

A pepper's heat comes from capsaicin and is measured in Scoville Heat Units, a scale created by pharmacist Wilbur Scoville in 1912. Mild sauces may rate a few hundred units, while sauces made from superhot peppers like the Carolina Reaper can reach well over a million.

On National Hot Sauce Day, shake some onto eggs, tacos, or wings, host a tasting with friends, or try making a small batch at home.