We’re lucky to get a bonus talk by CHSC president Charles Perry this year!

Perry explores the origins of hot sauce – a murky subject and one with a number of surprises. The story winds back through tomato ketchup and Worcestershire sauce to the 17th-century English infatuation with Asian condiments such as mango pickle and soy sauce. Their (ahem) thrifty attempts to counterfeit the foreign products led to the first bottled sauces. From there, Tabasco and Sriracha were inevitable.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Charles Perry is a well-known food historian. He wrote the chapter on the Middle East for the American Historical Assn.’s forthcoming textbook on food history, has translated four medieval cookbooks from Arabic and is at work on a fifth, which will be published by NYU Press. A great-grandson of Gold Rush pioneers, he has also studied California food history and is the president and a co-founder of the Culinary Historians of Southern California.