Why are salt and pepper considered the requisite table seasonings? Surely only salt is a seasoning. Wouldn’t it make just as much sense to substitute the black pepper for cumin, paprika or any other spice? Isla Weston, Lincoln
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Readers reply
Apparently, it’s all to do with Louis XIV. He didn’t like other seasonings to overpower the food. His chef, François Pierre La Varenne, also instigated sweet courses at the end of the meal to close down the appetite. GrasmereGardens
Salt was, first and foremost, a preservative. Salt beef and salt fish were staples in some parts of the world before refrigeration. Pepper, and other spices, expensively imported from the east, put flavour into indifferently preserved or downright spoiled foods. MkVII
Sgt Cumin’s Lonely Hearts Club Band doesn’t have quite the same ring to it somehow. eddiechorepost
In Hungary, paprika is a standard table seasoning. Fliz4b
In Morocco, salt, pepper and cumin are on the table, often in miniature tagine-shaped pinch pots. I have adopted the habit at home (I love cumin on all forms of eggs), although mine is in a Sainsbury’s spice jar, which isn’t quite so stylish. hopinghoney
Apart from cumin for some meals – often fried ones and boiled eggs – the condiment of choice in Morocco is harissa. There is nearly always a bowl of the stuff on the table in whoever’s house I go to, especially with fish or tagine. It could be green or red harissa – never that abomination rose harissa. The bread is dabbed into it and used to scoop up food. Some people have it with their Friday couscous, too, but many add onion chutney instead. There are few snack places or restaurants that have a cruet set for anything unless they also cater for tourists. DieHerzogin
They’re not at all standard or ubiquitous. In the US, you’ll find condiments such as ranch dressing, apple sauce and blue cheese dressing. In China, you’ll find light and dark soy sauces, Shaoxing rice wine and five spice. In the Philippines, there’s toyomansi (soy, citrus and chilli), banana ketchup, palapa (spring onion, ginger, chilli and coconut) and many combinations of coconut or cane vinegar mixed with soys or peppers. In India and Bangladesh, there’s all manner of pickles and chutneys. Dorkalicious
Here in the Philippines, the standard seasoning on the table is sinamakan, a spiced vinegar, often mixed with soy sauce. Some restaurants provide the vinegar and spices separately so that you can mix it to your own taste. PhilippinesScouser
In Switzerland, Aromat is also a standard table condiment. PaulR1234
It’s a very British peculiarity to apply just two seasonings universally for every possible food – and we wonder why our cooking had such a dismal international reputation. The reason for selecting them is probably simply their very wide availability and cheapness: salt is freely available everywhere and has a very broad culinary applicability; and black pepper is the world’s most widely traded spice. That it comes from the Malabar coast in what was once Britain’s largest colony could only have helped, for the same reason that Indian tea became Britain’s favourite drink (also flavoured with sugar and accompanied by tobacco).
A more interesting question is: was Britain’s adoption of these goods to such an extent demand-led (we could suddenly get our hands on it in huge quantities and at rock-bottom prices) or supply-led (we had access to vast quantities in new colonies, so a market needed to be created to exploit it by creating a social expectation to add it to every dish)? HaveYouFedTheFish
It’s northern European, rather than peculiarly British. You will find salt and pepper shakers on tables in France, Sweden, Germany and so on. “Cruet” is a French word. Pepper and salt grinders in the UK are a relatively recent continental import. When I was a child, salt and pepper always came ground. I remember cruet sets from the 60s that weren’t just salt and pepper – there was also a pot of mustard. Pre-war cruet sets often also had a space for vinegar or oil. Going further back, 18th-century cruet sets were similar, but replaced salt with sugar. Nutmeg graters used to be popular. I don’t know when the notion of putting salt and pepper on everything indiscriminately (rather than seasoning the food when cooking) was popularised in the UK. Victorian era, perhaps? referendum
I think it had more to do with status than flavour – salt being a form of money, as in salary. If you had a bowl of salt on your table, you were jolly fine people indeed; all the other herberts in the hall were “below the salt”. Pepper, as well, was highly desired and very expensive; lose a cargo on the high seas and there would be a subdued mood in the coffee house. Since then, it’s one of the very few examples of trickle-down that has worked. bricklayersoption
