Tabasco pepper

Tabasco pepper is a cultivar of Capsicum frutescens with small, upright fruits that ripen from green to yellow-orange and red. Its pungency and distinctive flavor make it the namesake pepper of Tabasco sauce.

Connect

Capsicum frutescens: A species of chili pepper that includes Tabasco and several other pungent cultivars. Tabasco pepper is one cultivated form of this species.
Tabasco sauce: A fermented hot sauce made principally from red Tabasco peppers, salt, and vinegar. The pepper is the sauce's namesake ingredient and supplies much of its heat.
Edmund McIlhenny: An American businessman who founded the McIlhenny Company and developed the original Tabasco pepper sauce. He established the pepper’s commercial identity through his sauce.
Cayenne pepper: A group of slender, pungent chili peppers commonly dried and ground as a spice. Cayenne is another hot pepper used in sauces, but it is not the Tabasco cultivar.
Capsicum: A genus of flowering plants that includes domesticated peppers and their wild relatives. The genus places Tabasco pepper among the cultivated chili peppers.
Fermentation: A metabolic process in which microorganisms transform sugars into other compounds, often without oxygen. Fermenting crushed peppers develops the flavor of traditional Tabasco sauce.
Avery Island salt dome: A subsurface mass of salt that forms the geological structure beneath Avery Island, Louisiana. The island's salt deposits supplied the salt used in early pepper mash.
Bird's eye chili: A name used for small, highly pungent chili peppers, especially cultivars of Capsicum frutescens. It shares the species and small-fruited habit, but denotes different cultivated peppers.
Solanaceae: A flowering-plant family that includes tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and peppers. Tabasco pepper belongs to this family through the genus Capsicum.
McIlhenny Company: A Louisiana food company known for producing Tabasco brand pepper sauce on Avery Island. The company built its signature sauce around Tabasco peppers.