40 Fun Facts About Salsa

Salsa sales in the United States passed those of which rival condiment in dollar value in 1992?

Ketchup was out-earned after tomato-based Mexican-style salsas boomed through the 1980s, helped by Mexican restaurants that had popularised salsa as a table dip.

The chopped fresh salsa pico de gallo has a Spanish name that literally translates as what?

Rooster's beak is the literal meaning, and nobody is sure why. One theory says diners once pinched up pieces between thumb and forefinger, the way a beak pecks.

Which chili, named after the Mexican city of Xalapa, flew on the Space Shuttle as early as 1982?

Jalapeño heat can be read on the skin: the small brown scars known as corking tend to appear on the hotter peppers.

A variant of the smell gene OR6A2 makes cilantro, a salsa staple, taste like what to some people?

Soap is what the herb's aldehydes suggest to people with the variant. Identical twins agree on cilantro about 80% of the time, which pointed researchers to genes.

Which cold drink does a better job than water of washing chili burn from a salsa-scorched mouth?

Milk can calm the fire because its casein proteins help carry the heat compound away, while plain water is largely ineffective.

Which animals eat hot chilies without feeling the burn, then scatter the seeds in their droppings?

Birds lack the heat response that mammals have, so the fire in a salsa chili works as a filter: it repels mammals, whose molars would crush the seeds.

Which US state's legislature named tortilla chips and salsa the official state snack in 2003?

Texas lawmakers likened chips and salsa to the square dance, the guitar and the rodeo: things deeply rooted in the state's tradition.

Which explorer's crew named New World chilies peppers because they were pungent like black pepper?

Christopher Columbus and his crew borrowed the name from the spice they knew, although black pepper grows on an unrelated vine native to India.

Which part of a chili pepper holds the most heat, although cooks often blame the seeds?

The white pith of the inner wall, where the seeds attach, carries the highest concentration. The seeds themselves produce none of the burning compound.

Which preservation method, used in Mexico for centuries, turns a ripe red chili into a chipotle?

Smoking dries the peppers over several days, until about ten pounds of fresh chilies have shrunk to a single pound of chipotle.

Pico de gallo's red, white and green earn it the name salsa bandera, from the Spanish for what?

Flag is the meaning, because red tomato, white onion and green chili line up with the three stripes of Mexico's tricolour.

Which tart green fruit, wrapped in a papery husk, is the base of Mexican salsa verde?

Tomatillo plants were domesticated in Mexico long before Europeans arrived, and they mattered more to the Maya and the Aztecs than the tomato did.

Which compound, also the active ingredient in pepper spray, gives chili-based salsa its burn?

Capsaicin triggers the same nerve receptor that responds to real heat and abrasion, which is why a hot salsa feels like a burn rather than a flavour.

Which American pharmacist devised a 1912 taste test still used to describe the heat of chilies?

Wilbur Scoville had a panel of five trained tasters sip chili extract diluted in sugar water until most of them could no longer detect any heat.

The fiery habanero, a favourite in Yucatán salsas, is named after which Caribbean capital city?

Havana lent its name because the pepper was once heavily traded there, yet hot chilies are rarely used in traditional Cuban cooking.

The leafy salsa herb that Americans call cilantro is known in Britain by which name?

Coriander is the name of the whole plant, and cilantro is simply the Spanish word for it: both descend from the Latin coriandrum.

The wild ancestors of the tomato, the base of red salsa, originated in which region?

South America, on its western side, is where the plant began. By 500 BCE it was already being cultivated far to the north, in southern Mexico.

Pace Picante sauce, launched by David Pace in 1947, takes its name from a Spanish word meaning what?

Spicy is the plain meaning of picante. David Pace tried his batches on his golf buddies before settling on one mix of peppers, onions and tomatoes.

Which Mexican sauce, named from the Aztec word for sauce, is often finished with chocolate?

Mole poblano averages about 20 ingredients, and the chocolate was probably a late addition: before the Spanish arrived, the Mexica reserved it for drinks.

The Spanish word salsa traces back to a Latin word describing food seasoned with what?

Salt is at the root: the Latin salsus meant salted, and the same word had already reached English centuries earlier, through Old French, as sauce.

The term salsa was first used to sell Latin dance music in the 1970s in which US city?

New York promoters borrowed the food word. Years earlier the singer Beny Moré had shouted salsa on stage in Mexico City to salute a hot musical moment.

The words tomato, chili and guacamole all entered Spanish from which Indigenous Mexican language?

Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, also gave salsa-makers the words chipotle, molcajete and comal.

A traditional molcajete, the three-legged mortar used to grind salsa, is carved from which rock?

Basalt is riddled with tiny bubbles, so as the stone wears down it keeps exposing fresh rough edges and the grinding surface renews itself.

The serrano pepper, a pico de gallo regular, is named after which feature of Puebla and Hidalgo?

Mountains, sierras in Spanish, gave the serrano its name. Some people in Sonora say the pepper's shape is what pico de gallo was named for.

Which name does a poblano pepper take once it is dried into a flat, heart-shaped pod?

Ancho simply means wide in Spanish. Along with pasilla and mulato chilies, it is one of the dried peppers behind the dark sauces of central Mexico.

Which fresh herb is the chopped green base of chimichurri, the uncooked sauce for grilled meat?

Parsley of the flat-leaf kind is chopped with garlic and oregano, then sharpened with red wine vinegar or lemon juice and spooned over steak.

Salsa golf, a cold mayonnaise sauce, was reputedly invented at a seaside golf club in which country?

Argentina credits Luis Federico Leloir, who is said to have mixed it for his prawns in the 1920s and went on to win the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Which Mexican breakfast gives its two fried eggs different salsas, usually one red and one green?

Huevos divorciados means divorced eggs. The pair is served like huevos rancheros, except that one egg sits under salsa roja and the other under salsa verde.

Chip and salsa brand Tostitos was title sponsor of which college football game from 1996 to 2014?

Fiesta Bowl, played in Arizona, carried the Frito-Lay brand's name for nearly two decades, following earlier sponsorships by Sunkist and IBM.

Botanically, the tomatoes and chili peppers in a red salsa both count as which type of fruit?

Berries is the botanical verdict for both: a tomato is the seed-filled ovary of a flowering plant, whatever the kitchen calls it.

Tomatoes and chili peppers, the backbone of red salsa, both belong to which plant family?

The nightshades are a family of extremes: its members include potatoes and eggplants, yet many relatives are highly toxic thanks to their alkaloids.

Which food giant paid more than a billion dollars in 1995 for Pace Foods, the picante sauce maker?

Campbell's paid $1.115 billion for a business that David Pace had begun by bottling jams and jellies in a small space at the back of a liquor store.

Salsa macha, thought to come from Veracruz, suspends dried chilies and garlic in which liquid?

Vegetable oil carries the flavour. The name macha may come from macho, strong or brave, because the result packed more punch than other salsas.

The habanero salsa xnipec, from the Yucatán peninsula, has a Mayan name meaning which animal's nose?

Dog snout is the literal meaning, because anyone who dares to try the salsa is warned that their nose will sweat like a dog's.

Salsa Lizano, a thin brown sauce splashed on gallo pinto, is a table staple in which country?

Costa Rica has had the sauce since 1920. Akin to Worcestershire sauce, it is ubiquitous on restaurant tables there and goes on eggs, rice, beans and tamales.

Mojo, the garlicky sauce family later adopted in Cuba, originated in which island group?

The Canaries make green, red and fiery red versions, and heavy emigration from the islands carried the idea across the Caribbean.

Rebecca Webb Carranza turned rejected tortillas into triangular chips in the 1940s in which city?

Los Angeles was home to her El Zarape Tortilla Factory, where discards from the tortilla machine were cut up, fried and sold for a dime a bag.

Which Spanish friar recorded Aztec vendors selling tomato and chili sauces in Tenochtitlán?

Bernardino de Sahagún listed the stalls' sauces in detail, right down to separate ones made from large tomatoes and from ordinary tomatoes.

Salsa criolla, a cold onion relish served with meat, is most associated with which country?

Peru serves it cold beside meat, built on onion, red bell pepper and tomato with lime juice or vinegar. Criolla is the Spanish word for Creole.

Chile de árbol, a small and potent Mexican pepper, has a Spanish name that means chili from what?

A tree is the literal meaning. The pods keep their red colour after drying so well that they are often used to decorate wreaths.