Ridiculous HistoryToday, hot sauce is a global phenomenon, with millions of bottles sold every single year. But where does it come from? What makes it so popular -- and why won't water douse the heat when things get out of hand? Tune in as Ben, Noel and Max explore the spicy origin story of hot sauce.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
I have Ben.
That's Noel. Do you see a wanderer from Afar? Who is that man?
Is that Max shoots at Clouds Williams.
It might be our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Max won't pass the gunshot residue test. Williams.
Max with opinions about the President's Williams.
Max Howe, that kind of has a slant rhyme to it. I like that.
So Max, you have returned to us recovering from the conditions.
Yes, what Okay? Now I'm just gonna just keep go past that.
Yeah.
No, I was on a quick little vacation when I saw some friends up in Charleston. When and saw my friends Michael and Jacqueline, who since the last time I've seen them, had two more children. They have five children, all under the age of eight. Yes, yes, and they're all blonde with blue eyes. My friends are referring to them as children in the corn. And they live on a farm. And yeah, I was like, Michael, I don't get why you moved to a farm. And then like you know, drove the tractor around and shot his twenty two millimeters rifle because that's the that's that's the biggest one I would hold.
I wouldn't do the shotgun.
And I was like, okay, I kind of get it. Still, like you know, Walmart's within thirty minutes of me, but still.
You would say the shotgun was too spicy.
It was a little too spicy. Yeah.
Do you see what we're doing here, Noel, I do, I do.
We're getting to the the the spicy stuff, the hot the hot juice.
What's another name for hot sauce. I don't know.
I've hit a wall Ua caliente.
Yeah, okay, fair enough, fair enough?
The uh uh the Devil's nectar, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, uh the Mephistopheles sip and juice.
Right.
Uh, that's that's a reach. But we are the milk of Apollo.
Yeah, go for it. Yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So we are returning with our history of condiments, and today we are following up on a conversation with our pal Ben Hackett, guest super producer here on Ridiculous History. We're talking about hot sauce and uh, Noel shout out to stuff they don't want you to know. I was listening to a recent recording we do, those holes, those absolute monsters. I was listening to a recording we did wherein we talk about the word sauce sauce.
You know what's funny, Ben, I watch a lot of British type cooking competitions, and I've noticed that they accent the word sauce really Unusually, they'll call it hot sauce, not hot sauce or any kind of you know, we're making like a nice Bonnets sauce and there's a real hard punch on the sauce.
They spend a lot of time on the.
U they do, they do, and they also, you know, they call it a filet absurd. You're close enough to France to know that it's pronounced file What are you doing?
It's an odd flex.
Speaking of which, check out our crossover episode with Ridiculous Crime.
But Ben, I love hot sauce. I'm pretty sure you love hot sauce. Max I think could take it or leave it because of his condition.
He has the condition.
Yes, I will say the condition is exacerbated by it. But I also just I just have never been with the hot sauce. I was at a friend's birthday party a few months ago and I picked up some of the hot wings and I ate a few of them, being like, I can handle this, and my friend Rob looked at me, goes, you look like you're in a lot of pain.
Now I hate it.
I wish I could.
You immediately fell out with a case of the vapors.
Yes, yes, well as Max is recuperating from the condition, which we are never going to explain. So let's talk about the history of hot sauce first off, can we. Yeah, let's so we're talking about when we say hot sauce, we're talking about a group term for condiments made with chili peppers as a base. It's true that there are other hot things, right, other hot condiments, sure, But nowadays, Noel, I think it's fair to say, in general, when people talk about hot sauce they mean stuff with chili peppers as sort of the kaiser sos, the key.
Ingredient a million saying yea.
And of course, much like barbecue sauce, there are lots of methods may vary wildly.
There's gonna be you know, more vinegary ones.
There's gonna be ones that are a little more chunky, maybe almost resemble more of a salsa. There's gonna be some that are punishingly spicy for the intrepid culinary travelers out there, and then there are gonna be some that are kind of for everybody, barely even like could be considered hot, almost more of like a nice little just a bit of a let's call it tang.
I like them all.
I don't necessarily go out for the punishingly spicy ones. I find those to be oppressive and pretty unpleasant. But there are some I think, you know, what is it the Scoville rating.
We should really talk a little bit about that at some point there.
You know, obviously there's a there's a scale for how spicy things are.
I think I find myself living comfortably probably in the middle somewhere. This is where I max out nice. How about you, Ben?
Do you like the I know our buddy Matt, who is not with us, who is one of those a holes on stuff that I don't want you to know, likes.
This hot as they come. Baby. He's like, give me all the caps, says.
It's so weird when we are on the road with Matt, and I feel like because Matt is so kind and polite. It usually falls to one of us to be the person who speaks to the waiter and says true, no, seriously, he does want it as hot as possible.
We our boy wants to be punished. He's been a bad boy.
He feels bad about something that there's this huge variety of hot sauce, as you said, Noel, because uh, they're also now a wide variety of chili peppers. There's active arms race, two ones.
Being made, right, We're trying to the mutant chilies.
Yeah, shout out Carolina Reaper, et cetera. So the weird thing is, with a lot of food inventions or discoveries, it's usually difficult to trace an origin point. Hot sauce is very different because chili peppers come from one place in the world. They come from what we would call Mesoamerica, Mexico, Central America, Amazon Basin, South America. It's the only place they grew on their own.
They would have grown naturally there. I got I got it, okay.
And then of course, like colonizers, Am I right, they just kind of scoop them all up and spread them hither thither and Yon, you're so.
Right, and these are pre European colonizers because chili peppers, just like maize or corn, chili peppers were domesticated by local populations. And oh gosh, I'm looking at all our bad puns for peppers. Little pep PEPs got domesticated really quickly. The use of chili peppers as a condiment dates back easily seven thousand BCE. Like the Aztecs were using this, They were probably grinding up chilis with water and whatever local herbs were available, and then they would eat them with an ancestor of what we call the corn tortilla today, which means the world's first case adea was likely a chili pepper paste casadea.
Well, now, Ben, I have to I may have to dispute this.
Do you think that they have the shredded Mexican cheese blend at this point in history?
Right?
They? We do know they had some variety of dairy, They did have da Okay, yeah, Now was it the kind of casadea we would recognize today?
Probably not?
Yeah, perhaps more of a caeso fresco type situation.
There we go.
I mean they also know isn't it true that Aztec civilizations or Meso American civilizations didn't just use this stuff as a condiment, they also used it as medicine.
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's it's powerful stuff, and as we know, oftentimes if you do have a little bit of a case of the sniffles, eating a nice spicy soup, you know, can really clear out your sinuses and it causes them to kind of run wildly. So the az Sex figured this out. They use it not just to enhance the flavor of their food, but also to treat, as we said, things like the sniffles, colds, sore throats, stomach aches.
And again I mean to this, Dave.
Actually, if you ask Anthony Bourdain rest in peace, what the best cure for a hangover is, he will say some really spicy food, a Coca Cola classic, and smoke a joint.
Oh I thought he. I thought he said aspirin. You might have said aspirin as well.
The rest of them might be placebo effect, except for the spicy soup, because I swear to God that stuff will cure what ails you, and at the very least it comforts you in some respect, and kind of does. Maybe it's because it's like such a a it affects you. Therefore, it might take your mind off the crappy thing that's affecting you.
Oh right, right, right, Yeah, it's because chili peppers contain a collection of things called capsaius aenoids. The main one of these is capsausin, and capsayusin mimics that sensation of heat when it hits where a families show when it hits certain tissues in the human body. Also, it was astonishing to learn capsayusin is part of the vanilloioid family, like the vanilla.
Wait, is that real vanilloid? Yeah? Yeah, it sounds like a very like white robot or something.
Right, Yeah, it's a It has nothing to do with the nooid of was that pizza hut? It was dominos, dominoes. It has nothing to do with the nooid of.
That guy was crazy.
That guy had made some really specific choices.
Yeah, I mean he was basically if anyone doesn't remember thenoid it was this like claymation dude wearing a rabbit costume and like flying around a red rabbit costume. I believe he used an umbrella like Mary Poppins, or maybe it was balloons, but I do distinctly. Remember there was a golden period for product tie in video games, and there was an Avoid Thenoid video game for Sega Genesis as well as one where you could play as the seven Up Dots.
Yes, yeah, and I did like the seven Up game for that.
I don't recall anything about it other than you were a little dot with like sunglasses.
So he is he?
Thenoid is a problem for all pizza delivery folks.
Is he a Hamburgler type figure? Very much? Yeah? You guys ever played checks Quest? No? I don't think so.
Is that like one of those early PC kind of like fantasy like text t type games.
No, it's actually so it's built off the Doom engine.
Cool, but it was just like it came free in a box of checks.
And you put it in your you know, Windows ninety five or Doss computers.
So we're going old.
Again now, and you're basically instead of you're playing Doom, but instead of you know, murdering people, you are sending slime back to a different dimension. It's a banger. It's like you can find it emulators and all them. They're multiple games. It's truly amazing, and you, like you think about it, you got it out of a box of checks, which was like, how much.
You're from a very pro serial family, Max.
Which is funny because I am a pretty anti serial person. Listen to our serial episode.
Yeah, yeah, there it is. And also for anybody who's eating peppers right now as you're listening to this, you're going to experience the follow up order of operations. Once you get that initial burn, you get a bunch of endorphins hitting your brain and that triggers an anti inflammatory reaction, right, that's the word.
I mean, it really is medicine.
Man. It'll do something for you, doesn't It cause like your blood vessels to contract or something like that.
Oh, like similar to caffeine.
I think.
So maybe I'm mistaken, but I could have sworn that I had another effect sort of like that.
We know that ancient ancient Meso American civilizations would use chili pepper to relieve toothpain, which I think is pretty interesting. I mean, also, it must be said, if you're a human, your mouth and your anus have similar receptors for capsayism, which is why sometimes the stuff that goes into your northeast will also burn coming out of your Australia.
Oh boy, I wasn't in were off off the map cap sason. Apparently there's a study from open Are published in Open Heart, which is like a you know, hard health journal, that found that cap sasin is very important for promoting vascular and metabolic health because it can actually improve blood flow, uh and therefore lower your blood pressure.
Oh there we go. Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of funny because you you'd think it would be like bad for stuff like that, you know, because it is so aggressive, it can be so like aggressively kind of all encompassing.
But yeah, I know it's doing good stuff. Have you?
Have you guys seen this amazing fellow on Instagram. I kind of forget what his handle is, but he goes one Carolina Reaper pepper dipped in chili oil. He talks like that, and he just like he eats these peppers all whole, dipped in the most like aggressively spicy chili oil and other various chili products, and then he just eats it and goes.
I haven't seen that, but I have seen the entire sub genre of YouTube reactions. There are people who will just explain to you calmly the crazy thing they're about to eat, and then the rest of the video is them sort of stowing, you know, or sometimes yeah, sometimes they are the people. I think the overreactors are playing a bit to the camera.
I think you might be right.
My favorite is a clip show I guess of TikTok reactions to this really really sour candy called like the Black Death and like this woman, this British woman says.
It's like there's a met boat jam through the roof of me mouth. It's like it's funny stuff.
And I'm sure there are some peppers that will make you feel that way too, if you're not careful.
All right, So we know that this pepper, the chili pepper phenomenon, it originates in Mesoamerica. How did it get to the rest of the world. Well, we got a fast forward to a bunch of Europeans. One guy who is notoriously terrible at geography, Crystabal Cologne, known as Christopher Columbus here in the US. He goes out on this journey to find India. He does not find India. He gets lost along the way and stumbles across one of the world's most popular condiments. The Queen and King of Spain had tasked him with finding pepper like table pepper, the grindable like peppercorns. Sure he did not find that. He did not find India. He found instead this intense spicy plant chili peppers. And he called it, in a burst of creativity pepper, probably because he didn't want to get in trouble with the monarchy.
Oh funny, So they weren't aware of this other kind of more spicy brethren to the humble table pepper.
They had no idea, and so he just called it pepper for branding purposes.
Essentially.
That's interesting, and now to this day we use peppers for all kinds of stuff. It's kind of I mean, you know, like green pepper isn't related to the chili pepper. Well, I mean, I guess maybe it's. It's what's the deal? Can we can we dissect really quickly what it means to be a pepper, and is table pepper peppercorns related to a green pepper or an orange pepper.
So black pepper, the pepper, corn, the table pepper. It's the it's a fruit of a flowering vine. So pepper is usually in that sense, that kind of pepper is usually dried out and used as a spice, or of course you grind it on a nice pasta.
Sure, Oh yeah, please say when? Right? Right?
Well, so I guess what I'm getting out here, Ben, is so the fact that we have associated the word pepper with all of these other kind of more you know, I guess, for lack of a better term, fruit like bodies, is all as a result of somebody kind of making a whoopsie and not wanting to get in trouble.
Yeah, yeah, kind of yeah.
His sory is.
Full of that kind of stuff, isn't it. It just sort of like someone just throws it out there and it just sort of sticks, and that's all we got.
Now, so we can give a collective boo to our pal Columbus.
Are we ready? Yes?
Please, let's boom boo on you.
Shame on you.
However, like the Police Academy franchise, this was not all bad, all right, Max? Do you want to do your Crystal Ball cologne comparison?
Oh?
That he's just like, you know, an early edition of what your will. Oh jeez, you know, if I get a chance to kick the corpse of Woodrow Wilson, I will Yeah.
New Potus rankings dropped.
So still too high. Still too high.
Yeah, he low, though he is a pretty relativelyately low. Not low enough.
He's in the teens for a long time.
He was top ten, though he's he's I think they said down five since twenty fifteen.
Can you give me like three of the worst things that he did that make you despise him? So again, I'm not nearly the student of presidential history that you are.
He resegregated the national government.
Oh, that'll do it, Okay, cool, staytamar.
He also invented that thing where you have to put emoji's in text.
I like emoji's in texts. Never well, he's much less aggressive than ending your text with a period.
All right, Yeah, I got you on this one.
So the uh, it's my feelings.
H And you know this trade, this proliferation of peppers, it came in step with the proliferation of things like this spread of onions and garlic. Europeans were exposed to peppers, but also people in meso America were exposed to garlic, they were exposed to onions, and now those are sort of a holy triumvirate of hot sauce.
Yeah, it's interesting too, especially considering that if I'm not mistaken, Ben. The spiciness of a chili is almost like a survival mechanism, you know.
It's sort of like a like a flower having thorns.
It's to discourage animals from eating them.
Yeah, that's absolutely true, and humans enjoyed that. We'll get to that. We'll get to why humans enjoy that in a second. But you're one hundred percent right. Let's spend some time on an oft ignored tail one. The Jedi won't tell you the Great Columbian Exchange, all right, So our buddy.
A middle passage type situation.
Geez really Yeah, So our buddy Christopher Columbus goes back to Europe. I mean, many other European explorers go to what they call the New World. They come back and they're like, we have this amazing plant. It's flavorful, it's cheap, it's adaptable. Spaniards in particular borrowed the word chili from Aztec civilization. Ah, and so borrowed.
Yeah, let's just let's just call it what it is.
Stole like they stole everything else.
Yeah, here's the cool fact that you taught me a few years ago. Hungary was one of the first countries in history to customize chili peppers, they created paprika.
Oh God, I love paprika. So paprika is is not spicy. I mean it's basically just ground kind of more savory, not sweet peppers exactly. I'm not sure exactly what kind of pepper goes into it, but it's such a nice, you know, just robust flavor.
I wanted to ask you, Ben.
You mentioned the idea of chili's being flavorful for people finding them to be. So do you think chili's at a certain spice level should be considered flavor or is it literally just poisoning yourself flavor?
Really? Yeah?
Okay, all right, yeah, because I loaded the question a little bit, but you yeah, you you held the line.
I agree with you because Hungary loved the flavor, the sensation, the depth of the chili pepper, but they didn't like the heat, so they removed the seeds, dry the pepper, grind it up into paprika, and to this day, Hungary is one of the best climates for growing paprika peppers.
Interesting.
I know, you know what I like a lot, Ben, A smoked paprika, Oh yeah, really takes it to the next level.
Also, I'm a cheap skate. So if I'm in your local grocery store and I see two choices of paprika and one is regular paprika, one is smoked paprika, and they're the same price, I feel like I'm losing money if I buy the regular pestle.
Smoked is usually a little bit more because it's this guy. It's a whole another process. I'll tell you the best. If anyone's passing through Atlanta, and I know you guys know this, you got to hit up your decab farmer's market where you can get absolute tubs of smoked paprika for like pennies on the dollar.
I knew you were going to say pennies on the dollar. They're crazy with the spices. Yes, go to get thee to the cab.
The last forever, you know. I mean, they really do you.
If you keep the mare tight in a dark, dry place, you'll be able to be rocking that smoke paprika for a good long while.
That's the thing too, about the trade that talking.
About these, you know, being able to this is a product that will keep right, especially if you're drying it out like it will, you know, not.
Spoil for very long periods of time.
Yeah, and the chili pepper didn't just hit Europe, right, It's now a fundamental part of Asian cuisine exactly.
But then we're talking about different types of pepper.
We got Seschwan peppers at this point, some of these peppers that have almost a numbing quality to them. It's really interesting the varieties of peppers that are out there in the world.
Yeah, the chili pepper arrives on the Asian continent via Portuguese traders, probably in the early fifteen hundreds or so. And this stuff is an instant hit. Their affordable, they're durable, you can domesticate them and grow like customize them for lack of a better word. So they replace black pepper as the primary spice across most of the continent, and Asian cooks begin mashing up their peppers with liquids and other flavorings, making all sorts of sauces a whole panopoly. Thailand in particular is the birthplace of something called nom prick that combines peppers in a sauce with things like fish paste or fermented shrimp paste. Shout out again to our pal Ben Hackett. He is a fellow fan of hot Takes and hot Sauce.
We were talking when he guest produced the show the other day about how it was a real bonding thing between he and his dad when he was growing up. They would try all these different spicy hot sauces after church.
They'd also go and get like, I think I'm not gonna lie. This kind of grossed me out a little bit. You know.
We see on hot Ones, that Hot Wing show a lot of times people will have a glass of milk on hand.
I don't know that it's scientifically proven.
That milk actually nullifies the effects of a spicy food.
But perhaps it's a placebo thing. But Ben and his dad opted for cottage cheese, which I find to be the most detestable substance in the culinary world.
Interesting out of all the other things.
It's a texture thing.
Okay, it looks like baby vomit to me kind of it evokes those feelings.
Do you eat a lot of baby vomit?
Or what's me? Who am I an acceptable amount? Acceptable?
Just like the FDA of Ratords and cereal.
I am a father. At some point a baby has probably vomited in my mouth.
Okay, So you're absolutely right about the milk dairy products do help you if you are over your head in a heatful situation. And it's because hot peppers, like you said earlier, they did not evolve to become purposely delicious. The heat was originally a way to make the plants less delectable to various animals. Exactly, I wouldn't fruit evolve to avoid being eaten. Apparently, it's due to the fact that small mammals would eat peppers, and when they did, because mammals have teeth, they would chew at the seeds and this would ruin the plant's ability to propagate to reproduce. But birds, as you know, well null, oh boy, they don't have teeth.
No, they just have weird, sharpened, pointy bone things that they come at you with. Sorry, I'm turning over a new leaf about birds.
I told you.
I've been playing Wingspan a lots. Yeah, and it's really changed my outlook on birds. I know so much about birds, and they are quite delightful creatures in their own way, but they also still freak me out. We'll leave it to humans to say, well, fu plant to your biologically evolved defense mechanism.
I'm gonna eat you. Just the same.
M h.
Yeah.
Yeah, birds have different taste receptors than mammals, so capsaiusin doesn't them the way a rat would be deterred. But humans liked the they liked the rush, they liked the pain of the thing. And one of the first questions civilization asks itself as the chili pepper goes global, is can we make money off of this?
Oh?
Yeah, there's definitely money to be made. I don't know how quickly do you think it kind of caught on, ben Like, it seems like a little bit, you know, when it would hit, it would be an acquired taste, perhaps, you know, at a time where let's just say culinary offerings were perhaps a little bit more on the vaniloid side.
Ah.
Nice, callback Yeah, it happened pretty quickly in the grand scheme of things, because again, the chili pepper is so easily cultivated. But so when they start making commercial hot sauce, there's a lot of debate about this. We are not sponsored by any like big hot sauce brand, please sponsor us, but we're super down by the way. So let's go to Massachusetts. In eighteen o seven, this thing comes out called cayenne sauce and it was named after the Cayenne chili peppers. But it wasn't until the eighteen sixties that hot sauce became a big staple in the United States. And it's all due to Tabasco.
Tabasco. Gosh, you know what I think when I hear Tabasco. Now, what's up that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Bob Odenkirk plays the porn star and he tells this whole story about how he was having a hard time getting you know, up for the scene and how Tabasco plays a role in helping helping I actually realize now that's why I said the thing about blood vessels contract. Oh wow, I remember it from Curb because apparent if you apply it.
Let's just say to you, what was it? What did you refer to the backside as the Australia the Australia. Then it'll causes you to go to messens.
That Bob Odenkirk is going places.
I think, yeah, they should give him his own show.
Maybe he'll get one. Speaking of fiery, fiery facts and foods, we got to give a shout out to Dave DeWitt and Chuck Evans over at Fiery Foods Central because they break down the evolution of commercialized hot sauce uh in. Weirdly enough, they learn about it via vintage bottle collectors.
Yes, indeed, and they say much of what we know about now extinct brands of hot sauces comes from bottle collectors. Like you said, Ben, there is not a great body of material on the subject of collectible hot sauce bottles, but we are indebted to Benny Zumwalt, author of Ketchup Pickles, Sauces, Century Food in Glass.
It's a whole book.
Really, No, it makes sense, you know, the idea of again, the ability to preserve this stuff. That's another thing that happens when you make hot sauce, especially there's a little bit of fermentation going on. Is it'll it keeps a lot longer. Although I only recently realized Ben that you you are supposed to refrigerate your hot sauces after opening.
Yeah.
Some people don't think about that because they think of it as like a table sauce, you know, like at at a restaurant.
But you should. I don't think it's gonna kill you.
I've definitely had some nice hot sauces that I did not refrigerate, and I ate them and I'm okay, I'm still with us. It didn't even get a tummy ache. But it does recommend that if you read the fine prim going on pickles, sauces, nineteen century food and glass, who dutifully this is Betty's zovall. We're talking about catalog obscure hot sauce bottles found by collectors. Many bottles in the hands of collectors were uncovered from archaeological digs and shipwrecks.
Yeah, they found they found the condiments that the sailor used, right, Right, And we've talked in the past about how naval food just absolutely sucked for so long. Right, they had heart attack, which is barely digestible or edible. So they want some hot sauce and the Yeah, the militaries of the world still love hot sauce today. If you open an mre, anybody in the US Armed Services can tell you one of the best things you get is a tiny little.
Like airplane bottle.
Airplane there it is airplane bottle of hot sauce.
It's the kind that Hillary Clinton keeps in her bag.
Right, she has that thing on her because she's connected, man, she's with the culture.
She's very relevant. Yeah.
So if we fast forward, we see that eighteen forty nine is a crucial year in hot sauce and condiment history. Yes, because that's when Lee and Parns out of the UK make something called Worcestershire sauce.
Yeah, people might pronounce it Worcestershire sauce, Wooster sauce, Wooster sauce results Harry, but yeah, I mean it's it's it's I don't know how I would describe Worcestershire sauce as sort of like liquid oo, mommie. It's a it adds a little tang uh and a little bit of not really spice exactly salt for sure, but really it just has this extra thing to it, right. It's really good to add to a soup, bass or whatever. Maybe on a steak. It's like if you've.
Ever, if you've ever, uh ever had to throw a bag of wet trash over your head and uh like, while you're throwing it in the dumpster, a little bit of that garbage juice, just a tiny bit gets in your mouth grows.
Yeah that's what. Okay, So you tell us how you really feel about Worcester sauce. I love it. I love it. Yeah, I think it's good.
It Also it feels to me again, I couldn't tell you what's in it exactly, but it does feel to me like, uh, there has to be some relationship with like a one sauce. You know, there is something in a one sauce that is very woosh to sure, but yeah, this really does become quite popular because also, as we know, British food kind of has a reputation for being bland and terrible. So you know, anything to add a little bit of flavor to that stuff.
We're sure actually has a lot in common. I would argue with the ancestors of ketchup right, like garam it's early guess it was.
More of a brown yeah, kind of like umammi paste.
Yeah. Yeah, I think we're nailing it with umami. And again, just to be clear, folks, please do not drink trash juice out of your garbage can just.
God, Ben, you had to say it again to bring it back. We're bringing it back.
Also, eighteen forty nine, that's the first recorded crop of tabasco chili's, which are the key ingredient in Michael Henny's Tabasco pepper Sauce. There is a guy who doesn't get sighted too often in the Michael Hinney story. His name is Colonel Monsel Watt. Oh, yeah, Louise or gentleman. Yeah, he's a real pilm. He's a Louisiana banker, and he has this. He has a series of plantations. One of them is called the deer Range plantation. He grows well. The people he enslaved grow these tabasco chilis on this plantation, and he eventually starts spreading the word. He speaks to the New Orleans Daily Delta paper of note at the time about this this crop he's growing, and no, I think you would love to chew the scenery on this one.
I must not own meant to notice the Colonel's pipple patch, which is two acres in extent all planted with a new species of red pipple which Kondel Lots has introduced into this country called Tabasco red pepple. The kernel attributes the admirable health of his hands to the free use of the pile.
Amazing, well done.
Health of his hands. I don't think he's talking about his two hands. Yeah, he's definitely not talking about his his you know, paid laborers with yeah, benefits and health care. He's basically referring to them almost like livestocks. Look look at the health of of my of my Yeah, yeah, it's it's gross.
It's like, you know, showing a horse's on auction or something.
It's And Tabasco itself is a misspelling of Tabasco, the Mexican state. More appropriation lovely. Yeah, he's not even get the spelling right. Super chill guy. He makes the first hot sauce from these chilies and he sells it in eighteen fifty nine. Around about eighteen fifty nine, he gives some of the chilies and a sauce recipe to his buddy, Edmund Mikilhinney. And Edmund mikil Henney, also a plantation owner, has a spot on Avery Island. He's starting to grow these things. The US Civil War happens. Union troops come in from New Orleans. In eighteen sixty three, mickel Henny and his family leave Avery Island. They hide out in San Antonio, Texas and wait for the heat to die down.
They come back. Wait, why are they on the lamb? Why are they being sought.
Up because the Union soldiers are invading.
Oh okay, and these are bad, bad slave owner men.
Yeah, they're not super chill hold onto their antiquated and despicable way of life. So they come back to Avery Island their plantation there in eighteen sixty five, and they see the plantation is mostly destroyed. It's pretty ruined. However, in the soil they see a few like picture Dave Attenborough style, they see a few little green sprouts chili plants have survived, and those patch the pepple patch, and Mikael Henney is able to regrow a huge crop of Tabasco peppers from this stuff.
They are resilient little buggers. That's actually a part and parcel with their whole. You know, stay away, don't eat me like they are. They have a bit of a heartiness to them.
And so in eighteen sixty eight he packages this stuff up using Colonel Watt's recipe or something inspired by it, and he sells it, or he doesn't even sell it.
At this point.
He said it to people that he hopes will be wholesalers, and he sends it in used cologne bottles.
Is there anything that Tabasco company has done to distance themselves from their racist legacy.
Also, do we know if they got all the cologne out of the bottles or unclear? Sauce was just like really clone, Like wait.
There was a there was like a little bit of a spill that was part of the secret ingredient.
Michael Heady's original now with Drakard Doir.
Yeah, it's so funny. You know he would be a man.
Yeah, because Drakard Noir is a choice. It's a bit of a douchebag cologne. Let's be honest, all right, Well, you know we're we're taking a lot of we're taking a lot of shots of people today, right hot.
So nobody in particular.
Just hey, if you were at Tricard Noir, go with God, It's fine.
I've definitely warned at some point, did you really? It's when I was younger and didn't know better.
Okay, well all right, man, everybody's on their journey.
It just sounds pretentious.
It sounds fake French or something, you know what I mean, like very hog daw Yeah exactly. I think we're talking about that that's fully fully invented. It's nothing to do with anything.
But speaking of invention, we do have to mention someone you you brought up earlier, Wilbur Scoville, the creator the Scoville scale. So whenever you see those TikTok or YouTube videos where someone's like, this is the hottest pepper, here are the stats, it's so and so on the Scullville scale, exactly.
You know, it's funny, but I meant to mention this earlier. But it reminds me the the innovations in peppers that are going on today. People you know, cross breeding things, and I believe there was another pepper that was just just dropped that is even spicier than the ghost pepper.
I can't quite remember what it's called.
I love it when people say something just.
Yeah, this new species of pepper just dropped. But it kind of.
Reminds me of like, you know, what, what what happens with marijuana now that it's much more you know, freely available and legal and less suppressed and stuff. So there's tons of different you know, strains and all of that, and cross breeding and people trying to make the fanciest, you know, most potent one. People always talk about weed back in the day was like way less strong. I kind of wonder if the same thing was true of peppers, you know, like old school peppers, probably there was nothing even approaching the levels of spice and variety that we have today.
But you're one hundred correct.
It was popular enough that there were enough different ones and enough different folks making hot sauces that somebody needed to keep track of them. So any little baby mouths out there wouldn't get point.
Yeah, inter Wilbur Scooville, Yeah, Silber, a little Wilber.
Yeah.
So he like he's alive. It's nineteen twelve or so, and there's so much hot sauce that people are trying to have some sort of uniformity right too, figure out some comparative scale. And his idea was this the Scuolville scale. Ask us, how much water do we need to dilute a spicy extract of a pepper in his case until it no longer tastes spicy? So every degree of dilution is one Scoville heat unit or shu a shoe. So, for instance, five thousand cups of water dilute one cup of Tabasco sauce to the point where it's no longer spicy.
For some reason, I'm picturing like a drug deal of hot sauce going now, or someone whips out the testing kit and has like the little dropper, you know, sticks it on like a like a magnifying glass plate or whatever. How does one conduct a Scoville test? Surely they don't actually have to dilute the thing with like a thousand cups of water.
Well, the scale itself evolved from that practice, but I'm sure there's much more evolved science now. We do know the Scoville measurement is the globally accepted standard for spiciness with these peppers. So and not all the peppers are, of course as spicy as the others. So shashido peppers almost a sweet pungency to those things. They have a pretty low shoe. They can be fifty to two hundred Schoolville units of Pulplano is more like fifteen hundred. Ajabanyero can be one hundred thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand Scoville units. And right now, if we're looking in twenty twenty four, the world's hottest pepper according to the Scoville rating system is called pepper X.
That's right, two.
Point sixty nine million Scoville units.
Wow, how many cups of water? Would that be too many? Human?
I did do a little cursory google and and there apparently is a thing, a device called the chili pot, which is claimed to be the world's first Scoville meter, designed to be using situations where people want to quickly and reliably know the Scovil units with their chili based product or chili pepper.
Wow. Yeah, so kids, test your chili peppers.
You don't wanna you wanna get you want to get any of those tainted PEPs I'm picturing.
I'm picturing some like hippie woodstock thing, but instead of drugs, it's all chili peppers. So I'm saying there's some guy running around like, don't eat the orange peppers.
Yeah.
Or like that scene in Boogie Nights where the dudes like fight lighting off firecrackers, you know, and like everyone and you listening to Sister Christian.
But I believe that's Rio Speedwagon.
Excellent scene, one of the most anxiety inducing scenes ever.
Who's that actor that plays like, oh.
Gosh, Gary, or no, it's not your own bit, but you could have It's not he could have though.
Alfred Molina, Alfred Molina.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah he could.
He's unhinged. Gary Oldman totally could have played this role. He's in a bathrobe waving a gun around. You know, I think Gary Oldman basically played that character in True Romance. Very similar. But but Max, I believe you have a Gary Oldman aside.
Oh yeah, yeah.
So before we got on the recording, Ben and I were talking. I'm like, oh, yeah, I finally got to watch Oppenheimer and I'm like, we're talking about the presidents at the same time. I'm like, yeah, Gary Oldman played a good Truman. Ben goes Gary Oldman's and Oppenheimer.
And I've seen the film.
Yeah, seen the film because we.
Talking about Robert Downey Jr. Kind of hiding in the character.
It's right.
I looked at the cast list. I'm like, oh, Gary Oldman's gonna show up as Truman.
Benny Softie's in it too.
Who I just is blowing up. I love that guy so much. I'm sad the Softie brothers are breaking up for the time being. But what a polymath. I'm just incredible actor, incredible director, incredible writer.
Just really really had to see that guy succeed.
And we're gonna wrap this episode up before one of us reveals themselves to be Gary Oldman, who is again an amazing actor. Like, if you're hearing this now, you might be Gary Oldman and you might not know he's that good.
He is. Yeah, he can rock the makeup. You know.
All he needs is like an eye patch, you know, to set him over the top. There's some really good memes where it's just like side by side images of him in different films, and the guy is an absolute chameleon.
Yeah, yeah, he's a regular till this one. They may be the same person. No, entirely possible. It's entirely possible. A thing that is also entirely possible. Speaking of awkward seguays, you can save yourself from the sensation of heat if you eat a pepper that's too peppy for you. Capsaius In binds to a thing called t RPV one vanilloid receptor, right, because again it's related to the vanilla bean. Sure, drinking water, as we all know, does not help you eliminate the heat, not a.
Bit, because it's not heat.
It's not like it's it's not exactly like you've burned your tongue or you have an auchi. It's something else you've like ingested a substance that is eliciting a chemical reaction that feels like heat, but it's not like But at the same time, though, I have to have to say, with certain levels of spicy food, you do feel like you're sweating and your face does kind of get warm. So the urge or the impulse to drink water it makes sense. But no, it's not going to do a damn bit of good.
You're absolutely right on all accounts. Capsisin again, that active ingredient or kaiser sous capsaisin dissolves in fat and alcohol, not in water, So if you drink a lot of water, you're spreading that substance around. We're just moving the burn to different areas, like you're like your gullet, right, dairy products and weirdly enough, booze will help absorb or act as a detergent.
Okay, it's true, Okay, cool.
Not for nothing do people serve chicken wings and beer and so many restaurants.
That does make sense.
It's a good pairing too, because a good beer has a nice crisp bite to it as well. They just sort of like it's just sort of like a nice white wine with the shrimp pasta or something like that. Big fans milk from mammals. It turns out contains a protein called casin, which is the same protein that creates the kurds in sour milk. No favorites those lumpy boys that also Yeah, if you scrape them off and splat them into a vat and you got yourself cottage cheese. Casin is a lipophilic, which means it was the fat protein and that causes it to act as a kind of almost the way detergent is able to dissolve and kind of you know, react with stains and with with you know, besmirchments of garments. This does so with spicy food with capsasm.
I do like besmirchment. Yes, thank you, that's great. And with that, folks, we are going to wrap up our history of condiments starting you know, this is our hot sauce episode. I don't know how to end it. I'm just so excited.
I will say this.
I may have let this little story slip in the past, but I am a big fan of hot sauce and I have very lucky to have occasion to travel to New York relatively frequently and when I go. In the past handful of years, I've been staying in Williamsburg and Brooklyn, and in Williamsburg, really close to the hotel where I always stay is a little shop call the Heatonists, which is a storefront connected with the now We Feast brand and the Hot Ones you know the Chicken Wing celebrity eating Chicken Wing show, And they have all of the hot sauces you can get with a subscription.
Again an a sponsor, but would be happy to be.
You can get all of those Heatonists Hot Ones hot Sauce bundles and they just have a remarkable collection of hot sauces from around the world. So every time I go, I grab a hanvel with the first time I went, I was a Dodo and I put it in my carry on bag.
Yeah, I.
Forgot that hot sauces just barely exceed the fluid outs levels for a carry on you are able to check it, but I was not able to check my bag for other reasons, and so they confiscated my precious hot sauces.
Ever since that, I'll always checked check the hot sauce.
I had a similar situation with moving some kimchi from South Korea.
And you sound like you're smuggling in it. No, no, I got it.
I got it through you know, totally.
Legal means.
And I just didn't think of the air pressure. And so when we landed in the US, I had this would have once been a very reasonable package of kimchi had ballooned up, and.
Lead leak in your bad.
Just expanded, expanded, and I was thinking we could probably still eat it. Kimchi is quite durable. It is quite durable, but it is uh. It is best to not take things on planes unless you know how they won't behave I don't know why that sounds like a mean comment about children on planes.
Oh, man, children on planes are the worst. They're up there. But yeah, you ever been in front of one that that just.
Like kicks your seat like I guess he's like he's doing it on purpose. And if you ever had to turn around and make a mean face at him, I'll do that.
I've done the face.
I've uh. The most recent time I came back from Portland. I like to come back from the West Coast a red eye because you get on the plane, you fall asleep.
And I got stuck next to.
A woman and her kid or kid was in the middle seat and he hapen trying to sleep on my shoulder.
I'm like, I don't know, you man, don't don't don't get.
No, he made it weird. Kid made a weird buddy. You were a lot smaller, you fit in these seat a lot. But I mean, granted my not general love for children as well stated, but still I'm like, here.
How how old would you guess the kid to be?
Nine?
Okay, undercover air marshal right.
Obvious, definitely definitely.
I will say I've been on the other end of that as well, where I've accidentally popped a snooze on somebody's shoulder and a plane what so yeah.
I mean it's look, when you're asleep, you don't know what you're gonna do.
I'm perpetually nine in my mind and in my heart. But no, seriously, guys, what's here?
Sleep? All bets are off.
Sure this wasn't asleep. This kid was like trying to do it while he was away.
He was doing he was knowingly max.
Yeah, definitely an air marshall. Okay, that's h and again so they call it honeypot right there. Yeah, so wow, tune into ridiculous histories, extended cinematic universe. Little Marshals, the new new.
From the Police to Cat, from the makers of Police Academy and Kindergarten Cop Comes Little Marshalls, Little Marshals.
We can't wait.
It's gonna be on Hulu probably or maybe maybe Disney.
It's gonna get buried on Apple Plus. There it is there.
It is stick with us. Hey, you guys know who else is a fan of hot Sauce? Do you tell Jonathan Strickland aka the Twister.
I thought he was allergic. I thought it would kill him instantly? Or is that just shellfish?
I think he has the condition?
Okay, well I just I just hey, look I just dropped in to see what condition Max's condition was in.
Oh, this whole episode is worth it because of the weird shrug Max just gave us.
It was a very good shrug. It was clear.
It was like the the It was like the shrug they based that emoji on.
There. It is there.
It is thanks as well to the fact, thanks as well to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Thanks to uh, let's see Eve's Jeff coat. Doesn't the condition sound like it could be like a wrestling name.
I'm really do.
It could be on Jersey. I'm sure they called me the condition.
You know, I'm going to write an entire episode about this condition and make us do an episode about it just because of this now, right, Well but no, no.
No, we got to keep the condition mysterious.
Yeah, we can never explain demystifying the I will never say what it is.
But I'm gonna say every single liken, like, every single thing about it, what it is. Someone can just Google search and figure it out.
Why.
Yeah?
Sorry, man, all right, Max, you're the boss. Whatever you say, samer than this tree while we have.
The chance, get it while it's fresh, folks. Uh, thanks of course to Alex Williams who composed this track. Thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs, which we will also not explain.
Noel, what is?
People might hear you on the Puzzler.
They might.
I actually was supposed to record yesterday, but I had to reschedule because I've had some electrical issues in my studio and the electrician.
Ran into the time that I was supposed to record with a jam.
But we have rescheduled for this Friday, so barely a hicco should come out around the same time that it was originally planned to, which I don't know when that is, but it will be in the very near future.
Yeah, do us a favor and see how I want to embarrass you.
I was going to say, see.
How old Bahamas feels about hot sauce?
What is this Bahamas business man? What is this Bahamas business? You'll have to ask him. He doesn't know, he said, So.
It's life conditioned, Noel, I guess.
Let's see you next time, folks.
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