Head into your kitchen and take a look around. If it’s anything like mine, or like any other average kitchen, it’s full of stuff like salt, pepper, cinnamon, cumin, powdered gelatin, sugar, mint, basil, onion, garlic, pork, beef, chicken, eggs, bread, butter, coffee, tea…all things we see, use, and eat on a regular, daily basis.

What today are common and popular condiments, foodstuffs and seasonings that we use every day, and which we can purchase at any time, were once expensive, hard-to-find luxury goods, available to only the richest and most prosperous of people. This posting  will outline the histories behind, and the significance of a selection of the flavorings, spices, foodstuffs and condiments found in almost every kitchen in the world today.

The History of Salt and Pepper

Any kitchen, any restaurant, any dining-table in the world, any fast-food eatery, cafe, diner and mobile food-wagon is going to have these two most important of all seasonings. Salt and pepper.

While we take these two staples for granted today; white, crunchy, tangy, musky, woody and spicy, they were once luxury goods available to only the most privileged of peoples, and available in only very small amounts. This is their history.

Salt

The importance of salt can hardly be exaggerated. It doesn’t just make food taste nice, but throughout history, salt has held a place of great significance. It was used for everything from flavoring meat, preserving food, and even as currency! A lot of expressions in the English language relate to salt and its one-time status as a rare and valuable commodity.

Today, you can buy salt from any supermarket in any number of forms. But in older times, salt was hard to come by, and incredibly expensive. Salt is acquired by one of two means, depending on which is the most effective:

The first is the simple evaporation of seawater. Gathering seawater into large, open troughs or pans and letting the water evaporate, is one of the most common ways of getting salt, even today. Once the seawater was evaporated by the sun, the salt-crystals would remain behind. Then, it was simply a matter of gathering the salt-crystals, washing them, purifying them, and repeatedly evaporating them until they were clean, clear, white and ready to use.

The second method of procuring salt was salt-mining. When vast inland lakes and seas dried up, they left large deposits of salt on the earth’s crust. Today, we know them as salt-flats. Salt in this form is known as ‘rock salt’ because it’s clumped up into large crystals. Accessing this salt is as simple as shoveling it out of the ground, mining for it, and purifying it, much like with the seawater.

But doing all this by hand, without the aid of modern mass-production, meant that for thousands of years, salt was a relative luxury. Industrial quantities of salt were used for preserving meat and fish. Food such as pork, beef, ham, bacon, and any number of sea-creatures were packed in salt to keep it fresh. The large chunks or chips of salt used in this curing and preserving process were called ‘corns’ of salt. Hence the term ‘corned beef’; literally, beef preserved by being packed in with large flakes and chips of salt.

Salt was so valuable and relatively hard to come by that as far back as the Ancient Romans, salt was used a currency. Soldiers were paid in salt, and only a man…”worth his salt“…would be allowed his allotted ration. When soldiers weren’t paid in salt, they were paid in coinage that would allow them to buy the salt which the money represented. This form of payment was known as a salarium. Working people are still paid their regular ‘salaries‘ to this day.

The relative scarcity of salt meant that it was a massive status symbol. These days, salt is sold and presented at-table in any number of ways: In cheap plastic salt-grinders or shakers, in plastic zip-lock bags and in shrink-wrapped packets inside pretty cardboard boxes. But it wasn’t always like this.

Salt was so important that once it was presented at the table, it was housed in a specially-manufactured piece of tableware: The salt-cellar.

You can still buy salt-cellars today, but antique cellars, made of glass and sterling silver were prized pieces of the household’s table-setting. The number of salt-cellars on the table showed off how wealthy the homeowner was, and the position of the cellars on the table determined and indicated a diner’s relationship to the homeowner!

A king, lord, or wealthy merchant would have closest access to the salt-cellar. The people in his immediate vicinity, and who were able to reach the salt-cellar, did so at the king’s invitation, and were said to be ‘above the salt‘. People who were less deserving, and therefore, who couldn’t gain access to the coveted salt-cellar on the table, were seated further down the table, and therefore ‘below the salt‘.

Salt was so important and prized that whole wars were fought over this simple, white crystal. Taxes were levied against salt, and restriction of prohibition of its passage through a country was even hoped to affect the outcomes of wars and battles. During the American Revolution, the British and loyalist colonials hijacked, stole or hid valuable cargoes of salt bound for the Patriots. While this may seem funny today…don’t forget that salt was required to preserve food! Without the salt, meat and fish could not be kept fresh for long journeys and big battles, which, the British hoped, would turn the tide of the war in their favour.

So important was salt that government mishandling of this precious flavouring could cause the population to turn against it in a hurry! In 1648, the Russian Government unwisely put a heavy tax on salt. Taxation in Russia was easily circumvented, and many people of relative means were able to get away with not paying their taxes.

In the early 1600s, Russia was in a transitional stage. The last tsar of the Rurik Dynasty had died and there was a fierce power-struggle, which ended in the 1610s and 1620s, with the establishment of the Romanov Dynasty, which would rule Russia until the Revolution of 1917.

The fighting caused by this power-struggle had left the Russian Treasury empty. To get much needed money for the government, and to stop the widespread tax-evasion of the time, the Russian Government decided that the fastest way to get money was to tax the one thing that everyone relied on…salt.

Salt was essential to the Russian diet. It was required by everyone to salt and preserve the fish and meat which was at the time, a staple to the Russian people. The salt tax infuriated the Russian citizens and in 1648, everything came to a head with the Moscow Salt Riot.

You wouldn’t think that much would happen. A bunch of peasants and serfs, middling sorts and shopkeepers rioting over a lack of salt couldn’t be that big, could it?

By the end of roughly ten days of rioting, half of Moscow lay in ruins, burned to the ground by people who refused to pay taxes on such an essential component of Russian life.

Such is the importance and significance, rarity and necessity of salt.

Pepper

There are several varieties of pepper. It holds the world record as being the most commonly used spice in the world. The most common pepper that people are familiar with is Piper Nigrum…’Black Pepper’.

Pepper was once a prized and rare spice. It’s native to the Asian regions of the world, around India, and the South Pacific countries. Access to this desirable but faraway spice caused the opening of the Spice Trade. The Spice Trade had existed for centuries. It started in the Mediterranean, and spread east from there, to countries such as Persia, Afghanistan, Siam, China, India, Korea, Malaya, and Indochina. The Spice Trade was done by sea, with routes running through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The Trade was also run through overland routes, such as the famous “Silk Road” through China. A lot more than pepper was traded, however. Popular spices included cinnamon, cumin, ginger and turmeric. Along with spices, silks, exotic woods, ivory, cloth and other exotic items were also traded. Pepper remained the backbone of the Spice Trade, however, because it was heavily used, much like salt, to flavour food, and/or to disguise the taste of less-than-fresh meat or fish.

Sugar and Spice, and Everything Nice

Aaah, sugar. Sweet, sweet, wonderful sugar. Brown, white, crunchy and sweet. The bane of dentists, dietitians and purveyors of health-food. This legendary substance has been used in everything from candy to chocolate, sauces, cakes, pies, muffins, cookies, and even meat! But, like salt before it, sugar was once a valuable commodity used only by the very rich.

Sugar is native to India. There, it is grown in the sugarcane plant. The juice or water extracted from the cane-reeds is a sweet liquid (…which is incredible to drink, by the way…) which for many years, remained untapped. For most of the world, the main sweetener was still honey, extracted from beehives. But when Indians learnt how to refine the sugar-water, and extract pure sugar-crystals from it, the sugar-trade exploded!…or not.

The issue was that sugar produced from sugar-cane was expensive and had a relatively low yield. As a result, sugar was incredibly expensive, and remained a luxury item and status-symbol throughout the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. If you could afford sugar, you were rich!

Sugar started becoming cheaper when, in the 1700s, it was discovered that another plant, the sugar beet, was also high in natural sugar. Sugar-beets were easier to grow and more plentiful. The discovery of the beet and it’s link to sugar was made in the mid-1700s, but it wasn’t until the 1810s that sugar-beet production and harvesting really took off! By the Victorian-era, sugar was becoming much cheaper, and the candy industry, with boiled sweets, chocolate-bars, cookies, cakes, pies and puddings really began to take off. Sugar-consumption shot up significantly during the 1800s.

Honey

Honey is something that everyone is likely to have in their house. It’s sweet, sticky and delicious. And it’s also healthy and good for you! Among other things…

Honey has been known to mankind for centuries. And before the rise of sugar in the early 19th century, it was the main sweetening agent used in cooking. Honey was used for a lot more than making things sweet, though. Just like salt, honey is a natural preservative. Food could be sealed in honey to keep it fresh for weeks and months at a time. Fruit and nuts were often stored in jars of honey to keep them fresh and sweet, during the summer months, so that they could still be eaten during the winter months, when fruits were less plentiful. Honey is such a good preservative that jars of ancient honey found by archaeologists are still good to eat today, thousands of years later. In some countries, honey was even used to preserve dead bodies.

Honey is also an antiseptic, and was used to treat and clean wounds on the battlefield in ancient times. English monarch, King Henry V, was shot in the face with an arrow during the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, while fighting under his father’s command. The battlefield surgeon cleaned the wound with honey, removed the arrowhead and bandaged the then-prince’s face. Prince Henry survived his injury, and the battle, and succeeded his father, Henry IV, in 1413.

From those reading this who suffer from bowel-issues, you might be relieved to know that honey is also a laxative. Raw honey, in as pure, and as unprocessed a state as it’s possible to buy, has a lubricating effect on the body, which helps relieve digestive issues such as constipation. Feeling a bit blocked up? Make yourself a couple of pots of tea with a good dose of raw honey mixed in. Not only is it delicious, but you’ll feel much better after a couple of hours…

Butter and Margarine

Anyone who’s ever done the schoolboy experiment of dropping two marbles into a jar of cream, sealing the lid and shaking the jar until your arms drop off, will know how butter is created (and yes, that is how butter is created…constant agitation of cream).

Butter is one of the most essential ingredients in the world. For cakes, for pies, for cookies, for sandwiches, for hot toast on cold nights, for greasing up the toastie-maker before making a grilled-cheese sandwich.

Butter has been around for centuries. Commercial exporting of butter is traced back to the 1100s in Northern Europe. For a long time, butter was considered a peasant’s food, fit to be consumed only by farmers and peasants. Eventually, however, butter became accepted as food for all classes, from kings and emperors downwards.

Because it’s a dairy product, storing butter was a problem. It had to be kept in such a way that it didn’t melt or spoil. Where possible, it was kept cold, underground, or in ice-houses or ice-boxes. Where the ground-conditions allowed it, butter was stored in barrels and buried in peat-bogs! This method of preservation was common in Ireland up until the end of the 1700s.

Butter became wildly popular in the 1800s. Sauces and dressings for salads and a variety of savory dishes were made using butter. In France in the 1860s, butter became so widely used that there was a severe butter-shortage! Emperor Napoleon III famously set up a nationwide competition! A prize, to anyone who could mass produce a cheap, effective and worthy substitute for butter, that would feed the poor and provide sustenance to the French Army! The prize was finally claimed in 1869, by French chemist Hippolyte Mege-Mouries. Mege-Mouries built on research done by other chemists, and developed the wonder-spread that would save France from a butter-drought! He named it..Oleomargarine…or just ‘margarine’ for short.

Margarine, made from vegetable fats and oils, instead of milk-fat, as butter is, has  always had a bit of a stigma. It’s seen as the poor-man’s butter. The cheap substitute that it was back in the 1860s is a stigma that is yet to be removed from its character. In fact, margarine was seen as so offensive, that it was actually prohibited in certain countries!

Because manufacturing cheap margarine would harm the local dairy industries, in the United States and Canada, the production and sale of margarine was made illegal! And…just like in the U.S.A. in the 1920s…it led to bootleg margarine. Hard to imagine, but it did! In the end, margarine-bans were ended (Canada, in 1948, America, during the late 1960s), but taxes and ‘margarine licenses’ meant that it wasn’t quite as cheap as probably it should’ve been. In the United States, there was a Margarine Tax (2c/lb). 2 cents a pound doesn’t sound like much, but back then, 2 cents was the price of a newspaper!

Potatoes

…Yes. Potatoes.

The humble spud has some pretty interesting stories to tell. It was once considered inedible and filthy. It came from the ground, covered in crud that you had to scrape off, after all…who wants to eat that!?

The potato comes from South America. It was introduced to Europe by the Spanish in the Early Modern Period. But acceptance was slow and grudging. It was considered cheap, peasanty food, not worth for anything but pig-feed. In fact, in the 1780s and 90s, when France was undergoing a record famine due to crop-failures, the French would rather starve to death than eat potatoes!

The potato-promoter extraordinaire was a Frenchman. His name was Antoine-Augustin Parmentier.  It was he who suggested that the potato, a versatile and adaptable food, would be the savior of the French people during their time of need! He was so convinced of this that he hosted dinners at which NOTHING was served…but potatoes…in one way, or another. For every single course. He even did this to the French king, Louis XVI! In the 1770s, the French medical society finally agreed that the potato was not the filthy, poisonous, and dangerous thing that came out of the ground, but, grudgingly, accepted that it could be eaten…this still didn’t stop the French from avoiding it like the plague, though…

The potato was the staple food of the Irish people for much of the 1800s. When the potato crops failed in the 1840s and 50s, thousands of desperate Irish men, women and children immigrated to the United States to save themselves from starvation.

But the most famous story about the potato is not how it became accepted into polite society, or how it affected patterns of immigration, but rather, how it became the popular potato-chip.

If you dug deep enough, you could (and some people have) found proof that this happened before this date, but the generally accepted story is that the crunchy, salted potato chip was invented in the following manner:

Moon’s Lake House, Saratoga Springs, New York, U.S.A. 1853. Moon’s Lake House is a popular eatery and holiday resort in the town of Saratoga Springs. The resident chef is an African-American, a young (by then, in his early 30s) man named George Crum. The fashion of the time was to slice potatoes into thick chunks, sort of like wedges, and fry them, so that they could be eaten with a knife and fork. A customer repeatedly sent back his fried potatoes to the kitchen, insisting that the slices were too thick, and so soggy that they kept breaking apart on his fork!

Insulted by this, Crum shaved the next order of potatoes until they were paper-thin! He flash-fried them in oil until they were crunchy and hard, and then showered them all over with a huge amount of salt! He sent the potatoes back out…

To his surprise, his new invention was a hit! Potato-chips made Crum rich! In a restaurant that he opened himself, after the American Civil War, Crum served potato chips in baskets on all the tables, as a snack-food for his diners before their meals.

Did Crum invent potato chips? There are some who believe so. There are some who believe that they existed before then, but were not named as such. However they arrived on the scene, they have remained popular for over a hundred and fifty years…