Published 4/29/09
OK, so it makes sense that one of the two major condiments on everyone’s table is salt — simple mineral, long history, used for preserving, one of the five basic tastes, and so on.
But why black pepper as the other one? Why not cinnamon or curry or mace or saffron or ginger or… you get the idea. Who decided on ground black pepper?
One of life’s many mysteries that I’m too lazy to research.
The Fray
5 responses
(add yours)
gnomic says:
If only there was something that explained it all, a wiki of sorts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper
April 29th, 2009 at 8:47 PM
Andrew says:
You mean that site I linked to in the original post, Gnomic?
April 30th, 2009 at 8:24 AM
Eric Berlin says:
It’s cultural, although I guess that only begs the question of why this culture settled on this spice. Anyway, in Hungary, it’s salt and paprika.