Pickapeppa Sauce Is the Jamaican Condiment That Makes Everything Better
Photo By Emma Fishman
Most of the childhood memories I have of my father have to do with him in the kitchen. He’s not a celebrated chef (outside of his social circle anyway), he’s never written down a single recipe (“They’re all in my head,” he says), and he doesn’t care all that much about the latest cooking gadgets (he’s been using the same stuff since my childhood). But I can picture how he moves around the kitchen, throwing a towel over his shoulder and reaching into the spice cabinet for what he calls “a little of this and a little of that.” And for as long as I can remember, he always reaches for a bottle of Pickapeppa sauce.
My dad is from Kingston, Jamaica, which is not too far from where Pickapeppa was invented in an area called Shooter’s Hill. As the story goes, a teenager named Norman Nash developed it in his own family’s kitchen as a hobby in 1921 and used a formula that’s now so coveted that the details are hidden away in a bank vault. Cane vinegar made in-house, West Indian red peppers, sugar, onions, raisins, and mango concentrate are just a few of the known ingredients, which are simmered down together in copper pots then aged in oak barrels in the same place where Norman first got the big idea.
