The History of Hot Sauce

A list of famous dates in hot sauce history 1807 - 1994. From the Austin Chronicle here

1807 The first bottled cayenne sauces appear in Massachusetts.
1860 J. McCollick & Company of New York City produces Bird Pepper Sauce in large cathedral bottles.
1849 The first recorded crop of tabasco chiles is grown by a prominent Louisiana banker and legislator, Colonel Maunsell White
1859 Colonel White manufactures the first hot sauce from the "Tobasco" chiles and advertises bottles of it for sale. Edmund McIlhenny plants some of Colonel White's seeds on his plantation on Avery Island.
1863 McIlhenny and his family abandon Avery Island to take refuge in San Antonio, Texas during the Civil War.
1868 McIlhenny packages his aged sauce in 350 used cologne bottles and sends them as samples to likely wholesalers. The sauce is so popular that orders pour in for thousands of bottles.
1870 McIlhenny obtains a patent on his Tabasco® Brand hot pepper sauce.
1898 another Louisiana entrepreneur (and former McIlhenny employee) founds B.F. Trappey and Sons and begins producing his own sauce, which is also called "Tabasco."
1906 The McIlhenny family trademarks the Tabasco brand
1916 Charles E. Erath of New Orleans begins manufacturing Extract of Louisiana Pepper, Red Hot Creole Peppersauce.
1918 La Victoria Foods begins manufacturing Salsa Brava in Los Angeles, California.
1923 Baumer Foods of Louisiana introduces Crystal Hot Sauce.
1928 Bruce Foods starts making Original Louisiana Hot Sauce.
1941 Henry Tanklage forms La Victoria Sales Company and introduces red taco sauce, green taco sauce, and enchilada sauce -- the first of their kind in the United States.
1947 David Pace begins to sell picante sauce in Texas. "In '47, my sauce bottles exploded all over the grocery shelves because I couldn't get the darned formula right," the founder of Pace Picante Sauce remembers.
1955 La Preferida begins manufacting a line of salsas.
1975 Patti Swidler of Tucson, Arizona launches Desert Rose Salsa, a line designed to be sold in gourmet shops.
1979 Dan Jardine begins production of Jardine's commercial salsa, launching Austin's reputation (disputed by San Antonio) as the hot sauce capital of America.
1990 Austin beats San Antonio in the first Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Contest. Several contest winners go on to bottle their winning sauces, setting off a hot sauce explosion in Austin.
1992 Salsa replaces ketchup as America's number one condiment in dollar sales.
1993 Kitty Crider of the Austin American-Statesman counts 48 commercial salsas being made in Austin.
1994 With over 350 hot sauces entered, The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Contest claims the title of the largest hot sauce contest in the world.