Considering that black pepper is native to just a couple of the Spice Islands of today’s Indonesia archipelago, while salt from the sea or mined from deposits of ancient seas is present is many parts of the Earth’s surface, it is not surprising that the familiar combination of table condiments, salt and pepper, has not forever been universal. Long-distance trade by caravan and by sea did bring the precious peppercorns, along with clove, nutmeg, and allspice to faraway markets to command high prices. But in 2024 the ubiquity of S & P gives the impression that it is free or otherwise holding little worth (noticed only by its absence). In this article, let us imagine the first taste of salt AND pepper in the cooking and at the table, too, for people living distantly to the Spice Islands themselves. Some of the sensations may have included senses of novelty, thrill, rarity (high status by scarcity), urges to sneeze or cough from the unaccustomed mouth feel and reaction to the chemical character of the unfamiliar pepper paired with the trustworthy and familiar taste of salt.
Casting a wider net, there are so many other food combinations that came together for the first time; tastes unknown before that moment. Joining peanut butter with various things like jelly or banana or sweet pickle or with chocolate, for instance. Applying butter (the world of dairy) to popcorn (from the New World) is another flavorful combination. Then there is chocolate in its many forms. Before the Europeans married milk and sugar with the black drink of Meso-America, the drinking experience was altogether different, very bitter indeed. Other combinations are probably ancient and do not follow from global trading networks: vinegar and oil pair well. So do flavors intersecting sweet with salty, or sweet with sour. Most ancient of all, perhaps, is fatty and salty.
Glancing around the 2024 grocery store there are combinations of tastes that seem perfectly ordinary, but which also date to a first time, of course. Chocolate milk, strawberry milk, marijuana in diverse edible products (candy, baked goods, drinks, maybe even shaker bottles as a condiment), novel craft beer ingredients, original toppings added to pizza products, additions to icecream and so on.
Turning 180-degrees, away from the moment historically when things like salt came together with pepper, doubtless there are many, many unexpected flavors (and food sources — insects, perhaps?) yet to come; things juxtaposed that then come to be widely loved, rather than 1-time oddities. In the past week on Twitter (“X” as owner Elon Musk calls it) a person temporarily in Japan was mildly shocked to bite into a slice of seemingly ordinary pizza only to be surprised to taste honey drizzled onto the cheese-covered tomato sauce. Maybe honey will be the new condiment alongside salt-pepper, hot sauce, and so on.
Returning to the humble intersection of salt and pepper, though, the first generation or two of monopolized trade pitted murdering and plundering between Dutch entrepreneurs and English ones*. That seems preposterous in 2024, but it was life and death for some of the people contracted for long months of service far from home. So the next time you reach for the salt and pepper, consider the time when it was a new idea to taste both things in the same mouthful. There really was a first time that Salt met Pepper.
*See Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History by Giles Milton
