Hot sauce

Hot sauce is a type of condiment, seasoning, or salsa made from chili peppers and other ingredients. Many commercial varieties of mass-produced hot sauce exist. Hot sauce is sometimes called chili sauce or cayenne pepper sauce, but the latter has a thicker texture and viscosity, and often comes in sweeter or milder varieties.

Humans have used chili peppers and other hot spices for thousands of years. Inhabitants of Mexico, Central America and South America had chili peppers more than 6,000 years ago. Within decades of contact with Spain and Portugal in the 16th century, the American plant was carried across Europe and into Africa and Asia, and altered through selective breeding.[1] One of the first commercially available bottled hot sauces in America appeared in 1807 in Massachusetts.[2] Few of the early brands from the 1800s survived to this day, however. Tabasco sauce is the earliest recognizable brand in the United States hot sauce industry, appearing in 1868. As of 2010, it was the 13th best-selling seasoning in the United States[3] preceded by Frank’s RedHot Sauce in 12th place, which was the sauce first used to create buffalo wings.[4]

Many recipes for hot sauces exist, but the only common ingredient is some variety of chili pepper. Many hot sauces are made by using chili peppers as the base and can be as simple as adding salt and vinegar. Other sauces use some type of fruits or vegetables as the base and add the chili peppers to make them hot.[5] Manufacturers use many different processes from aging in containers to pureeing and cooking the ingredients to achieve a desired flavor. Because of their ratings on the Scoville scale, spicier peppers such as the Ghost pepper or Habanero pepper are sometimes used to make hotter sauces. Alternatively, other ingredients can be used to add extra heat, such as pure capsaicin extract or mustard oil. Other common sauce ingredients include vinegar and spices. Vinegar is used primarily as a natural preservative, but flavored vinegars can be used to alter the flavour.[6]