Italian nouns are designated as masculine or feminine. For example, vicinanza (neighborhood) is a feminine word, and villaggio (village) is a masculine word. Generally, nouns ending in !a are feminine, nouns ending !e may be either masculine or feminine, and nouns ending in !o are masculine.
Sowing the Seeds. According to family tradition, TABASCO Â® brand Original Red Sauce was created in the mid to late 1860s by Edmund McIlhenny. A food lover and avid gardener, McIlhenny was given seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers that had come from Mexico or Central America.
On Jan. 18, 1868, McIlhenny sent a letter to a family friend in New York. Always a meticulous record keeper, he noted the contents in his correspondence logbook: âHu. Auchincloss, N.Y., thanking him for a Stanhope lens and a water-drop glass for my microscope. And sending him a bottle of my Tabasco pepper sauce.â. Those who received such gifts were so enthusiastic that McIlhenny resolved to bring his Tabasco sauce to market. That year, he planted a bumper crop of peppers. A year later, he sent 658 bottles of his sauce to grocers in New Orleans, where they sold for $1 apiece.