Tabasco Power!

Mark Robichaux gives the history of Tabasco sauce and the family behind it An excerpt:

Given Tabasco's three simple ingredients--vinegar, pepper mash and salt--competitors who had been using the Tabasco pepper in their own sauces were stunned in 1906 when the McIlhennys were awarded a trademark for the word "Tabasco." It was as if someone had claimed the word "mustard." The head of the company, Edmund McIlhenny's eldest son, John, was a former Rough Rider and a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt's; rival companies suspected that the friendship influenced the government's decision, Mr. Rothfeder says, but they couldn't prove it. The trademark was later successfully defended in court and today stands as an American business rarity: a trademark that is also the name of a generic ingredient. The McIlhennys have vigilantly enforced their rights ever since.

But the primary reason that Tabasco has dominated the hot-sauce category is the consistency of its flavor and spiciness. When I talked with Louisiana's celebrated chef Paul Prudhomme for an article I wrote about McIlhenny Co. in this newspaper several years ago, he told me that other sauces could be unpredictably too hot--or too tart or too salty. "I may use 10 drops of Tabasco, but I can trust that 10 drops," Mr. Prudhomme said. Edmund McIlhenny, with help from a small group of ex-slaves and close friends, had relied on intuition, not laboratory tests, to mix his recipe--with remarkable results. "That Edmund McIlhenny instinctually navigated a near flawless balance between heat and flavor when he invented Tabasco sauce is either dumb luck or yet another indication of his commercial genius," Mr. Rothfeder writes.