Frank’s RedHot Hot Sauce – that zesty cayenne sauce that’s the key ingredient in Buffalo wings, America’s No. 1 hot sauce, the one that’s advertised with the tagline, “I put that ___ on everything” – was created more than 100 years ago in Cincinnati.
If you didn’t know that last fact, you might be excused. Even the brand’s website doesn’t mention Cincinnati in its history, instead focusing on the Louisiana connection.
But make no mistake, Frank’s RedHot was born and bottled in the Queen City, produced by the Frank Tea and Spice Co., and first put on shelves in 1920.
Before we get there, though, let’s start at the beginning.
Back in 1896, Jacob Frank decided to end his career as a traveling salesman and go into business in Cincinnati. He partnered with his brothers, Emil and Charles, to start a company at 20 W. Second St. selling small, shelf-sized packages of whole and ground spices, rather than in bulk.
As the company became the nation’s fourth largest manufacturer of spices, it also diversified. In 1906, it introduced Frank’s Jumbo Brand Peanut Butter, which was a popular local brand, allowing the company to expand to a larger facility at Culvert and Third streets.
Then, in 1918, Jacob Frank traveled to Louisiana to learn about making hot sauce based on cayenne peppers, rather than the tabasco pepper used in Tabasco sauce.
Frank found a partner in Adam Estilette, who was from a Cajun family, and together they set up a pickling plant in New Iberia, Louisiana, to process and cure cayenne peppers before they were shipped to Cincinnati. Other spices, salts, garlic and vinegar were added to the peppers, which were then aged in oak casks.
“The secret of the famous sauce is in its special formula inspired by the spirited flavor of the foods served in the early days of New Orleans,” read a Frank’s Red Hot Sauce ad from the 1940s.
An operational manager described the process to The Enquirer in 1980:
“Each year, we buy 4-6 million pounds of fresh cayenne peppers for this Red Hot sauce alone in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, California, North Carolina, Mexico and Venezuela. We take them to New Iberia, Louisiana, where we wash, grind and combine them with salt. Then we age them in oak barrels for a considerable length of time. When they are sufficiently aged, they are shipped to Cincinnati in a mash stage. We then combine them with other ingredients, according to our secret recipe, and go immediately into our cookers.”
After the sauce is cooked in 4,000-gallon tanks, it is piped to a finisher, which removes the seeds, then is sent to a cooling system before assembly line dispensers pour them into bottles. At that time, the company filled and labeled 72,000 bottles of the hot stuff a day.
The most famous use of Frank’s RedHot came about the night of Oct. 24, 1964, at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. Bar owner Teressa Bellissimo needed to whip up a late-night snack for her son and his friends, so she deep-fried some chicken wings she used for stock, added a dash of red sauce, then served them with celery and bleu cheese dressing.
That red sauce – Frank’s. And the Buffalo wing was born.
As Buffalo wings became a staple football food, so soared the popularity of Frank’s RedHot.
But it’s not the sauce’s only sports legacy. At Crosley Field, the Reds used to serve a spicy brown Dusseldorf-style mustard custom-made by the Frank Tea and Spice Co., mixed with Frank’s RedHot sauce. The special condiment was not sold to consumers, but Frank did sell a similar Mister Mustard brand in stores.
Enquirer columnist Cliff Radel could still remember the taste of Crosley’s mustard 30 years after the Reds moved to Riverfront Stadium without it. He helped convince the team to offer a similar signature spicy brown mustard when Great American Ball Park opened in 2003.
The first choice was Uncle Phil’s Dusseldorf Mustard, then in 2013 the team switched to two types made by the Woeber Mustard Co. in Springfield, Ohio – Woeber’s Dusseldorf Mustard and Frank’s original Mister Mustard, made in 1939.
After building a plant in Sharonville in 1968, the Frank Tea and Spice Co. changed hands several times. It was bought by Frank Foods in 1969, by Durkee Foods in 1977, then by Reckitt & Colman in 1986. In 1992, the spice portion of the business was sold to Specialty Brands, so the hot sauce production was moved to a plant in Springfield, Missouri.
In 2017, McCormick & Co. added Frank’s RedHot and French’s mustard to their brands in a $4.2 acquisition of Reckitt Benckiser Group.
More than a century after the first bottle was sold, Frank’s RedHot has a fanatic following.
“I think my blood is 50 percent Frank’s,” one person wrote in an essay for the National Buffalo Chicken Wing Festival. Another wrote: “No meal is complete without the exquisite taste of Frank’s running down my throat. The sheer euphoria can only be compared to going to heaven. I know I am the ultimate Red Hot fan because Frank’s completes me.”
“It’s especially a lifestyle brand for millennials,” McCormick chairman, president and CEO Lawrence Kurzius said in 2018. “Literally, the younger you are, the more likely you are to be a consumer.”
Not bad for a 100-year-old from Cincinnati.
Sources: Enquirer files, “Historic Restaurants of Cincinnati” by Dann Woellert; www.franksredhot.com
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