In 1571, along came a Spanish priest by the name of Alonso de Molina, who to this day, lives on in salsa history. He understood the Aztec language and customs, eventually serving as an interpreter. One day he was going to town on a turkey leg, but to his chagrin, he had overcooked it. The meat was more dry than the Aztecs’ sense of humor.
Luckily, he had seen what his friends did to address this glaring – and frequent – issue, before ovens solved it. He spooned some tomato and spice mixture on the turkey and took a bite dripping with that delicious juicy condiment. He looked around and deemed it “salsa.”
The Spanish word salsa simply means sauce, but boy does it sound NICE rolling of the tongue of us Anglos. We have Alonso to thank for for his influential place in the origin of salsa.
Fast forward a few hundred years, and salsa is only growing in popularity. In 1807, bottles of salsa are being distributed across Massachusetts. By 1868, an entrepreneur by the name of Edmund McIlhenny came on the scene. He began packaging a rudimentary form of what came to be known as Tobasco pepper sauce in used cologne bottles. The sauce was immediately popular and commanded a huge demand.
