Scorned Woman – Original Hot Sauce

When it comes to craft hot sauces the market has exploded in the past 5-10 years. We’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of new companies pop up with the goal of producing tasty artisan sauces with innovative flavor combinations, most selling direct through their websites and perhaps local farmer’s markets and some local grocery store shelves. Current artisan sauce makers focus on building their brand with a wide variety of sauces under that umbrella covering a range of heat levels and flavor inspirations.

Scorned Woman is from a previous generation. Coming out in 1993 this sauce is from the primordial age of the craft hot sauce world. This sauce launched the same year as Dave’s Gourmet and just a couple after Blair’s line. Interestingly even back then some companies decided to work on establishing a full line and brand, while others like Scorned Woman and a ton of others (often with “colorful” names) decided to forgo that brand building. Scorned Woman has been owned by a variety of larger food manufacturers over the years. Currently it’s Vita Specialty Foods, a company predominantly focused on packaged seafood, and was recently purchased by another food conglomerate SVB Foods.

The sauce itself is one of the more unique tasting that I’ve had recently. On the surface it looks like a typical red hot sauce, medium-thin consistency and perhaps a slightly darker color. There’s a strong peppery spice note to the scent, and the lemon juice also comes through on the aroma. The first taste took some time for me to wrap my hand around. There was considerably more heat than I expected, and it hit different from other sauces that I’m used to. The sour lemon juice element comes through very strong, an almost puckering experience, and there’s a major black pepper element in the flavor profile.

That big black pepper element is one of the reasons I believe this sauce has such a unique heat element. While chile peppers get their heat from capsaicin, black pepper is a big source of piperine, another chemical that can taste pungent and spicy/hot. Acid increases that effect, and with both vinegar and lemon juice there’s an instant wave of big black pepper heat followed right behind by the chile peppers. That lemon juice also dominates the flavor over the vinegar. This isn’t a vinegary tasting sauce, but neither is it traditionally citrusy, instead it’s that sour and puckering flavor of lemon that comes through.

All of this makes this sauce taste quite different from anything I’ve had before. I enjoy the flavor, so it’s more than just a curiosity, but it’s also a very strong flavor, especially with the black pepper and lemon elements. I found adding a glug to a bowl of hot noodle soup was a great addition – the flavors still came through but were diluted enough not to overpower the soup. It’s also excellent to toss a chicken patty in for a chicken sandwich, the other ingredients do a good job of helping to soften the sour blow and instead it becomes complimentary. Despite not being a super-hot sauce I found this sauce was best treated like one of those just because of its very strong flavor profile. There’s no danger of blowing up your tongue to the point where you won’t be able to function, but too much can overpower a dish.

If you’d like to taste a bit of craft hot sauce history and experience a very unique sauce this is one I can recommend.

Ingredients: Vinegar, Water, Dehydrated Peppers (aged tabasco, red, black, habanero, jalapeno), Lemon Juice Concentrate, Salt, Black Pepper, Natural Flavors, Sodium Benzoate (preservatives)

Heat Level: 5/10. This sauce hits harder than its ingredients would suggest. A true chile-head medium level of heat, most likely because of the inclusion of the lemon and black pepper augmenting the heat of the chile peppers.