MEXICAN ENCHILADA SAUCE - PART I

Cost Savings

Real Mexican-style enchilada sauce includes chili peppers… or does it? In their central Ohio location, Milano was not close to chili pepper growers. In fact, there were no significant U.S. growers east of California. Availability, supply logistics and cost were major problems.

Steve lay awake one hot summer night contemplating the myriad of problems surrounding the Mexican-style enchilada sauce formulation and processing. He was particularly struggling with the chili pepper problem. Suddenly he sat straight up in bed, scaring the daylights out of his wife. Why not use eastern bell peppers, he murmured. When they are diced, they have the same texture, color and mouthfeel as chili peppers. Capsicum, the compound responsible for the "heat" in hot peppers, could be extracted from the white rib of the hot pepper, and added to the sauce. Using a capsicum liquid distillate derived from green hot peppers, heat could be added to bell peppers and the sauce. Thus, eastern bell peppers could be substituted for the hot green chilies. He couldn't wait to get to the lab the next morning to try out his "hot" idea.

He made a batch of sauce using eastern bell peppers he purchased at the supermarket on the way to work. Fortunately, there was some capsicum distillate in the ingredient supply cabinet in the lab that was left over from experiments they had done about two years ago to enhance the hotness of their salsa. Later that day, in a blind taste panel made up of Milano employees, no one was able to detect a difference between the sauces with chili peppers and those containing bell peppers and capsicum distillate.

The following day, he made another batch using the same ingredient combination and shipped it via UPS to Julian. When Julian conducted a taste panel at Pedro, no differences were detectable between their standard sauce and the experimental sauce that Steve had made. Julian immediately called Steve to report the positive results. He congratulated Steve on producing such a good flavor match. In his exuberance, Steve proudly described how he and his product development team had substituted eastern bell peppers for the chili peppers, and had added an approved flavor ingredient to get the desired hotness. Julian replied candidly that this would be an unacceptable substitution. Why, asked Steve, in crestfallen disbelief? Julian said matter-a-factly, "We're not looking for an Italian enchilada sauce; we want a Mexican-style sauce, and Mexicans use green chili peppers - not eastern bell peppers".

Steve thought, "So now what do we do?"