Lunch time in Mother’s Diner, downtown New Orleans. Plates are piled with po’boys, mighty sandwiches stuffed with fried shrimp, oysters or roast beef. Their gravy-drenched prodigality belies their origins as hand-outs to starving workers during a street car strike in the Twenties.
Muffaletta anyone? It’s like a plate-sized flat loaf filled with marinated olives and slices of salami, emmental, mortadella and provolone cheese. Buy one and feed the family.
Maybe a bowl of gumbo, a broth of seafood or meat seasoned in filé; or how about a mound of debris, the shavings from the roast joint left floating in the gravy?
This is Louisiana, where the food is born out of hard times — from the Spanish occupation and the wreckage of the Civil War and from outside cultures, such as the Creole mix of French, Spanish and African American and the Cajuns who settled there when expelled by the British from their Nova Scotia homeland in 1755.
Today, these are all dishes made exotic by their unfamiliarity to European palates and given extra gusto by another Louisiana classic sitting on Mother’s tables — a good ol’ red-topped, green-necked bottle of Tabasco.
Hard to imagine an eaterie in Louisiana not serving the state’s home-grown pepper sauce. Even the most sophisticated of the restaurants in food-loving New Orleans — legendary names such as Brennan’s, Commander’s Palace or Antoine’s — have bottles at the ready.
Why stop there? Tabasco is sold in 160 countries, cheering up bland breakfasts and lacklustre lunches, bringing zest to oysters and putting the bloody into mary. It is found in restaurants such as Hix Oyster & Chop House, Richard Corrigan’s Bentley’s and the Bibendum Oyster Bar (of course), and even in that stalwart of spice, Star of India.
Now it transpires that this most bravura of exports is a favourite of the British Royal Family, so much so that it has been granted a royal warrant by the Queen — making it the only independent US firm in the food category. Heinz, owners of Worcester and HP Sauce, also has the coveted imprimateur.
It’s an incongruous thought, a bottle of Tabasco on the Buckingham Palace sideboard. How are they on Louisiana cuisine at the Palace? Are they, as you read this, enjoying a special Independence Day menu ? Grits with the black ham and eggs, Ma’am?
Grits! It is hard to find a food more likely to disappoint Her Majesty than this tasteless sludge of ground corn. Even with the reviving tincture of Tabasco, this is alien culinary territory — almost as alien as the bayous of Louisiana, where skeletal trees are laden with eerie curtains of Spanish moss and alligators nose through the green algae.
But deep in the bayous of this, the least American of states, is the headquarters of this, the most American of brands. It was here, on Avery Island in 1865, that Edmund McIlhenny, a banker who had lost his fortune in the American Civil War, planted his first peppers. The story goes that he was given a handful of seeds by a Confederate soldier who had fled to Mexico after the war. McIlhenny planted them and was delighted when half a dozen bushes sprang up. He experimented with mashing the peppers, adding vinegar and salt, to make a sauce that he bottled in old cologne bottles. He was better placed than most culinary adventurers. Avery Island is, in fact, the dome of one of the biggest salt mines in America.
In 1869 he produced 658 bottles. By 1889 production reached 41,472 bottles. Today 700,000 bottles rattle off the lines every day. It still has the same ingredients of peppers, natural vinegar and a small amount of salt, which are matured for up to three years in old white oak whisky barrels. Grand-père, as he is known by today’s family, would still recognise the flavour.
John Avery McIlhenny, the elder son, who took over in 1890, increased the pepper fields from five acres to 70 and stepped up production. But he was restless, joining President Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders to fight in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and helping to quell a revolt against US rule in the Philippines. His brother Ned spent years exploring the Arctic, and his son, Walter, went to war in 1941. Using the combat code name Tabasco Mac, he fought at Guadalcanal against the Japanese, where, according to an eyewitness, “He leaned up against a coconut tree and started firing. He killed six of them, just like that.”
With all this adventuring it’s a wonder that Tabasco flourished, but in between hunting, shooting and looking for trouble, the company’s marketing accelerated — particularly under Walter, who used every gimmick available to him, such as promotional songs on the new 45rpm records, and supplying US servicemen in Vietnam with a Tabasco recipe book. During the Iraqi conflict, an advert showed a Marine about to hurl a bottle of Tabasco as if it were a hand grenade, with the slogan: “Defending the World Against Bland Food”; and, last month, the British Army in Afghanistan was sent Tabasco to combat “menu fatigue and taste degradation”.
Britain was an early market. The first export arrived in 1873, though the grocers Crosse & Blackwell turned down the chance to handle its sales because there was such a glut of sauces that they thought it would be “unprofitable”. Today, more than two million bottles are sold a year.
The Royal Warrant might be one of the company’s highest accolades but it will have to be its most discreet. The manufacturer can acknowledge the warrant only with the “By appointment . . .” sign on the label and is not allowed to use it for anything as vulgar as advertising. The warrant is earned by supplying the royals for at least five years, and all 800 of the current holders will have passed a series of checks on their environmental credentials and their workforce conditions.
Paul McIlhenny, the latest in the dynasty, lives on Avery Island like his predecessors and is very much in their mould. He is clearly a man who knows his food — no stranger to the best restaurants in New Orleans — and has a reputation for being an accomplished cook. He has introduced new varieties, such as a jalapeño-based Green Pepper Sauce, and a Chipotle smoked version.
But it’s the original that captures the imagination — maybe because it has stayed true to Grand-père’s recipe.
As Jeremy Lee, the exuberant head chef of the Blueprint Café, southeast London, says: “I can’t imagine a kitchen without Tabasco. You can make something out of nothing with just a few drops. It’s like the magic elixir of life. And how could you have a bloody mary without it?”
