Why are salt & pepper most commonly used together as opposed to salt and garlic, or other spices?
In: Culture
When you taste food it is a combination of sensory input from receptor cells in your mouth and nose. The receptors in your nose are able to differentiate a very large amount of different things, this is where the nuanced flavor of food comes from.
The receptors on your tongue and in your mouth are more focused on picking up specific things. Like the receptor for sweet only picks up short chain carbohydrates, the receptor for sour only pings off on the H+ ion from acids.
Salt and pepper are ubiquitous because they are able to ping off those mouth receptors without changing the signals sent by the receptors in your nose. To make it simpler they make things taste better without changing them. MSG works in the same way, it pings off the glutamate receptors in your mouth without hitting the receptors in your nose. On a side note amount matters, black pepper very much does have a flavor but the amount of pepper needed to enhance food is below the amount needed to add a pepper flavor.
One of the tricks used by professional chefs to make their food taste better is to season with more than just salt and pepper. Vinegar or lemon juice (sour), sugar (sweet) and parsley (bitter) are all used along with other things to make food taste better without adding additional flavors.
There is no reason that black pepper has to be used, capsicum peppers (chilis) can serve the same purpose. The reason black pepper is more common has to do with availability. Before Columbus chili peppers were only a new world plant. Black pepper originated in southwest asia and was traded the world over and was pretty thoroughly entrenched in european cooking by the time chilis came into availability.
First off, the always having a pepper on the table is a very western, very American thing.
Salt is a pretty neutral seasoning; it enhances pretty much all flavors. [“at low concentrations it will reduce bitterness, but increase sweet, sour and umami, which is desirable for sweet recipes. But at higher concentrations it suppresses sweetness and enhances umami, which is good for savoury things.”](https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/why-does-salt-enhance-flavour/) You add pinch of salt to cookies; it makes them taste sweeter. You add heavier amount of salt to steak, it makes it taste more savoury. Salt has its own receptors on our tongue (there are no specific ‘garlic receptors’ or pepper receptors lol).
Pepper is spice that adds some mild heat to most dishes, and isn’t overpowering to the other flavors. Even if you add a lot, it’s mostly the heat you notice. It’s own flavor is pretty mild. The accompaniment is probably [mostly for historical reasons](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/02/582477785/how-did-salt-and-pepper-become-the-soulmates-of-western-cuisine).
Salt because it’s a mineral that is essential for life, and we developed a specific taste for it.
Pepper because of France, and French cuisine, and everyone wanting to emulate French cuisine.
FYI, in Hungary, paprika is often in place of pepper.
I’d imagine because they can easily be dried and stored at room temperature. You could do garlic salt, but that is mostly salt with some garlic in it. I’m not sure that garlic would dry and store well by itself.
[removed]
Salt is basically a necessity in food – the human body requires some of it, and our senses have evolved to find it delicious. Since it improves the taste of basically any food when used properly, it’s very common in cooking, although there are other ways to improve flavor without using much of it in cuisines around the world.
Pepper is most common in Western cooking, but not quite as popular in other cuisines to sit on the tabletop. But it’s popular because it’s a mild flavor with a small amount of heat (if used in the right quantities) that tends to go well with meats and fish. The key is that it’s mild – it serves as a good baseline spice that can be added to nearly everything without overpowering the flavor of the food itself, unlike stronger flavorings like garlic, which is delicious but can overpower more delicate foods. Black pepper is used around the world, but on the table, other cuisines often use red pepper, pickled chilis, paprika, etc. to fulfill the same purpose – adding a small amount of heat and flavor that goes well with most dishes.
[Its OK to be Smart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzBIarGJjHk) has an excellent YouTube video on this.
I left it realising that… f**k pepper!
It’s not common in Vietnam. We use “Bột canh”. So you can see that is the way cultures work. One man try to do a thing. After doing that “thing”, he doesn’t die and the production is good, so he tell his friends and neighbors. Everyone try too, and they love that. They decide to do that everytime ineed. That “Thing” is now a common thing in the place.
Thank you everyone for your input and explanations! I now know more about salt and pepper than I ever thought I would
Latest Answers