Our traditional Czech fairy tale is named "Sůl nad zlato" what means "Salt over gold." It is about kingdom. King has tree daughters. They had to say, how much they love their father. First says "I love you more then all glittering gems." Second says "I love you more then the priciest gold." And the third says "I love you more then salt." It is really nice fairy tale 😁
A very similar thing happens in "Cap o'Rushes" which is a version of Cinderella. A father ask her 3 daughters how much they love him, the youngest one, and his favorite, answers him that she loves him more than meat loves salt, the father gets furious thinking his favorite daughter doesn't love him so he throws her out of the house. The girl then has to disguise herself, makes a dress and hood out rushes and finds work as a scullery maid on a big house. Thing happen, he falls madly in love with her and when they finally marry she invites her father to her wedding without telling him who she is. She serves him meat without salt and only then he realizes how much his daughter, whom he thinks he'll never see again, he starts crying at the wedding and then she finally reunites with him
@@ItoNarasimha yeah... The king gets insulted and exiles his daughter but also bans salt in the kingdom. They destroy all the salt so that there is none. Then you kind of just observe their struggles of how food is bad and all the other problems. Meanwhile the daughter is taken in by an old herb collector lady and live happily together. In the end, the kind regrets it, not just kicking out his daughter, whom he loved dearly, but also his stupidity of how salt is truly valuable despite its commonality. My favourite part is when the king visit a peasant woman who kept her salt and offers her riches and diamonds and she just kicks him out. "What am i going to put o my bread? Gems? Get off my lawn! " 😂😂
It's my opinion that the more sugar you eat, the worse that bitter tastes will seem. And that goes for artificial sweeteners, really, anything that hyper-stimulates the sweet receptors. When I quit sugar and sweeteners, suddenly all the bitter aromatic flavours tasted way way nicer. I remember the first time I drank black coffee, I spat it out as if I'd accidentally drunk some industrial waste, now I love black coffee and think it's ruined by any sweeteners, sugar or milk. I now love me some good rich mustard, I get through those little pots of coleman's mustard so damn fast I don't use quite as much of it as I used to use Ketchup. But I think a sweet tooth is acquired by eating sweet stuff often enough that sweetness loses its potency and you need more sweet stuff. Stop having the sweet stuff and you'll stop wanting it and your tastes may change as mine did. Ketchup is just about the sweetness, the sugar is the overriding taste with a bit of vinegar and tomato so it doesn't taste like literal candy, but it's all about being sweet. Tomato puree is absolutely not an acceptable substitute. Though I don't really like the taste of pepper, I only add a hint of pepper to my seasoning mix to increase the availability of turmeric. I can't stand it when one seasoning like pepper is added in such large amounts all you can taste is pepper.
@@Treblaine We eat way too little bitter foods. No seeds anymore in grapes, cucumbers, melons etc anymore. We also don't eat enough sour. All fruits, apples for example are much sweeter than in their wild form. Everything is just sweet. It plain und unhealthy. ... and actually disgusting if you have a trained taste. ...
A very influential king, fun fact king Louis the 14th was the longest reigning monarch in history(with verified dates) beating out queen Elizabeth by nearly 2 years
Your not America. Here, it is salt and pepper and I must agree it is sickening how redundant it is. Let us revolutionize the salt and cumin combo dear sibling character for it is an important endeavor.(and salt and paprika of course. )
The most common argument i see here is that pepper tastes "neutral" which is simply not true and you would know that if you ever had freshly ground pepper, the real reason is because people in the west are used to this flavour, it is expected and as such it seems normal, ask people from other places and they will tell you of wildly different spices that they use every day, pepper doesnt have any objective quality that no other spice has, salt on the other hand of course, reigns supreme.
All spices can't matter until each spice matters. Have you looked at the statistics? HAVE YOU EVEN LOOKED AT THE STATISTICS!?! lmgtfy.com/?q=%22The+statistics%22
@@briancooley8777 "potassium, zinc, copper, iron" those are all metals. Salt is a crystal, although it is commonly mixed with lower quantities of metals or minerals.
as someone who has tried a variety of other spices in cooking and seasoning, I will admit that pepper is a very easy spice to use. It's hard to go wrong with pepper.
Salt and paprika Salt and garlic powder Salt and oregano Salt and cinnamon Salt and some other spice Spice and wolf Salt and allspice Salt and Allstate Allstate and State Farm Salt and cumin Salt and Help I'm trapped in a RU-vid comment Salt and red pepper Salt and mustard Salt and more salt
While I agree with you on the need for more spice representation, I can not support denouncing pepper. It is my very favorite spice and should be allowed to be the star some times.
Pepper is not just black pepper, there is green pepper and also white pepper. White pepper cost 2x more than black pepper. All those comes from the same plant, just processed differently...and all taste different too...from some one planted pepper
I appreciate how he specifies “western cuisine”, because growing up in a Chinese household, we surely don’t use all that much pepper in cooking, at least for the region my family is from. We use a disproportionally large amount of garlic, scallion, ginger, and cilantro instead 😂
@sprock absolutely no chance that garlic is as commonly used in the west. Chillis I could see for some households, but many genuinely are those "black pepper is spicy chilly is too much" in the colder parts of the west. When you look at western recipes, most still toss in black pepper even if it doesn't make sense. I don't know what world you're living in, but I wish I was in it
@@AmalingAmericans are really weird, im my country we eat so much garlic (its delicious) and all kinds of pepper hot and non hot, that we have a reputation. Ironic given we are called vampires.
He talked about salt and peper and briefly their history but not really why peper taste is liked so mucht, or why salt and pepper are used in so many dishes as standard seasoning from a cullinairy point of view. I feel like he talks about the subject but does not really or fully answer the question.
As he discussed in the video, it's because Pepper is an arbitrary choice, most likely influenced by the personal spice of choice of Louis IV. Unlike salt, pepper is not an essential nutrient, so there isn't really any scientific/biological basis why it's popular. Personally, I always enjoyed the variety of spices, pepper is a great spice but it's a pale choice if your dish only contains salt and pepper.
@@yvrelna That's true, but I guess maybe it could be because of all the spices, the peppercorn has one of the most "neutral" flavours? It's just piquant, it doesn't taste strongly of anything but heat. Other spices have stronger flavours that don't go with everything. Peppercorn goes with pretty much everything. It tastes good with fish, good with white or red meats, good with roots, vegetables, leaves, even fruits like tomatoes or strawberries. It's a boring but very safe choice.
+Sklin different cultures make different foods? You think Canadians eat rice/tortillas/carne asada regularly? Sure some, but not most Don't know why you felt the need to put a passive aggressive comment like that
Awesome episode! Thanks for suggesting the embrace of other flavors. In fact, in most Moroccan local restaurants cumin and chili powder is served with salt, but not pepper. I love your videos, big thanks, and keep them coming.
One quick correction about the early European use of pepper to mask the flavor of spoiling meat: There are records dating at least as far back as the medieval period regarding thr delivery of meat. They specify quantities, times of day to be delivered, and (I believe, but doo't remember for certain) also for time between slaughter and delivery. So, they weren't eating spoiled meat anymore than than the people I saw in Guinea 20 years ago. They also didn't have refrigeration etc and simply bought their meat and fish freshly caught or butchered by the side of the road.
Right! And one more thing to keep in mind is that the people who could afford pepper in the Middle Ages and early modern times were rich. Rich people would have been able to afford fresh high quality meat. The people who might have eaten stuff that was a little past it's prime (not much, mind you! People didn't want food poisoning) were the ones who couldn't have afforded pepper anyways
It's a different kind of spicy, but you can certainly make soups and chili's unedible with too much and it's because it's too spicy. But, it's different than say habenero's.
It depends on the quality of your pepper. The ground black pepper you find in mass foodservice won't be really spicy unless you pour half of the shaker in your plate.
They probably only have stale pepper powder or something, or grew up being force fed peppered margarine pasta, the sorry sods. They'd change their tune if they ever got to eat a good grilled steak.
K A R T I K I don’t like pink Himalayan simply cause it’s a trend. Trends are really stupid. Especially when people think a pink rock is special or even magical 🤦 Plus I’m perfectly fine with Sea salt. It tastes great and doesn’t have those anti-caking agents like in table salt. :)
@@briancooley8777 But sea salt isn't always iodized, so you should be careful about that. Also let the man enjoy his Himalayan rock salt. I mean I agree that it's dumb to think rocks have magical powers, but I think he just likes it because of the taste.
I believe you forgot the medical application for salt in the ancient world, Also when these two elements come together they may balance out an food item that's too sweet or bitter.
More diversity in spices is a good thing, but what you fail to understand is that pepper is so famous because it deserves to be. It's a unique spice in the sense that it just works very well in a lot of cases, while most other spices are better used in moderation and only in certain combinations.
Pepper adds a background flavor to almost everthing I cook. It rounds out the flavor, even if you don't always notice it. A lot of spices can be used as background flavors, that help set the scene for the main ingredients.
There is no such thing as the "oldest language". Many languages can be traced back quite a bit, but there's no first language. A video on linguistics in general though would be interesting. If you like linguistics, check out these channels: Xidnaf, The Ling Space, NativLang, and LangFocus.
As a person whom frequently cooks with spice, I find myself agreeing with you, so many people just have salt and pepper but spice like life is more than just black and white, to be able to fully enjoy it you have to experience the full spectrum of flavor.
@@IrenaDeacon That we like it hot! :D Most of our famous dishes (gulyás, paprikás, pörkölt, fisherman's soup/halászlé) need paprika spice in it, with out it is just not the same. :)
Hey, I was wondering what source you used for the "6 grams of sodium chloride a day" because every source I've checked recommends a significantly less amount, about 2.4 grams or less was what kept coming up. Thank you!
Although Pepper started in India, but we don't actually use that much pepper in our foods. In fact, our most common combination is salt and chilli. Whether it's powder, flakes, paste or whole. In fact many people, like me for example, don't ever like eating pepper.
+jinitron in order to have something also, you're implying there was a tag #whitespicesmatter in very recent history in order to coin an opposing movement as if someone was left out.
Depends on how far back you want to consider. Moving goods from the coastlines to the inner regions of a continent requires a pretty heavy investment not only in roads but way stations and patrolling, and even then it could take weeks or months to move goods across such distances IF the destination had something worth brining back. So coastal people had easy access, central ones did not. If one was lucky enough find a nice easily mined deposit then you were in good shape, but a lot of people had to buy it from other regions.
Salt may be very easy to find, but it still takes a lot of work to convert it into a usable form and then transport it to everywhere that it is needed. And there's a HUGE demand for it.
You are spoiled by the convenience of modern life. The industrial revolution made the gathering of minerals (i.e. salt) infinitely easier. Back when everything had to be done by the strength of man and beast, it was an immensely laborious process. Not to mention how perilous it was to transport a commodity that could be lost if it were caught in a rainfall during transport (don't forget, transportation could take months prior to the advent of the locomotive). The same applies to aluminium - during Napolean's time it was actually more precious than gold.. but once electricity was discovered and the chemistry of aluminium understood, we were able to make our own aluminium - in a matter of months it went from the most precious metal on earth to the cheapest metal on earth. The conveniences of modern life cause many people to take for granted how difficult even the simplest things were long ago.
Awesomely interesting clip! Although, you guys know that having salt and pepper on a table is extremely western. Even if this western tradition can be found in East Asia or in Africa, it does not detract from the fact that, traditionally, they are much less preferred over Chili powder, soy sauce or the like, in those areas. Thanks for the interesting clips and keep at it!
+A Totally Ordinary Aubergine Umami is the scientifically and culinary accepted word. Savoury is mostly used as a word to describe something with good taste, like delicious, not necessarily someting rich in Umami.
+Steve S Nope. Nope. Nope. Read your own links. 1) there is nothing described there that is not covered by the word savory 2) umami is not the officially recognized word. The first umami symposium of Hawaii (Nobody of consequence) declared it to be the official word. Meanwhile the rest of the world carried on teaching savory as the 5 taste as they had been since the 14th century. Nobody used the word umami until about 3-5 years ago. I don't know where this myth that the fifth taste was something that was ever debated came from because I have textbooks from the 1930's that refer to the fifth taste as savory.
Jaden Peterson saying "people liked the taste of more" is really kind of subjective, as not everyone prefers the same flavors, especially different cultures. As for easier to obtain, that could be the case, but I'm pretty sure there are spices that are much easier to obtain than newly found peppercorn.
Black Pepper in comparison to Paprika, doesn't have a sharp taste on its own. If you pur a fair amount of both on a dish, you'll barely be able to taste the Black Pepper, although you'll taste the enhancement of the flavor already there as well as a tinge of spyciness, however you will clearly be able to taste the paprika. Salt and Pepper function as flavor enhancers, Paprika and many other spices changes the taste and flavor of the whole dish.
pepper was not used to mask the taste of spoiled meat. pepper was much more expensive than meat. it would have been cheaper to buy new meat than cover it up with pepper.
Flys and certain other bugs and microbes dislike many of the spices and herbs we eat. Thyme is currently distilled to make some organic antiseptics. Cinnamon oil has been used as an insecticide. Spices used to be used in fruit cakes, which were often used as rations for long journeys. More likely pepper and other spices, with salt, were used to preserve the food: though, trying to use it sparingly, because they were expensive.
HillMeister's HQ Or more likely as a preservative before the food could "go south." Most "nasties" dislike most of the herbs and spices used in cooking, including pepper.
The most common type of pepper used in Europe before the 16th century was actually long pepper: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_pepper They are often mixed up with black pepper but it doesn't come from the same plant.
