Origin: India. Birdseye chillies + salt + vinegar + time = Tabasco sauce. It's been a while since I was a student at Monash studying Chemical Engineering & my memory isn't what it used to be, but I'd be damned if I ever came across the equation above during my studies - not even in Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook (a whopping $126 back in '95, I've still got the price sticker on it). But you know what I did come across? Logarithms. What a fantastic way to multiply & divide numbers. Birdseye chilli scores in the range of 30,000 - 50,000 on the Scoville pungency scale - a logarithmic scale. Pimentos score 0. Anyway you do the math, these babies are damn hot