Please Pass the Flavor

FAR-FLUNG FORERUNNERS OF THE WORLD’S FAVORITE CONDIMENTS

MUSTARD

Using seeds from the

Brassica juncea plant as seasoning dates at least to 3,000 B.C. in Sumeria and India; the Sumerians were likely the first to grind them into a paste. King Tut was buried with a passel of the seeds, to spice up the afterlife. The Romans mixed the ground seeds with wine, creating a tart sauce we might recognize today. The sauce was later called mustum

ardens— Latin for “burning wine”—and shortened

to “mustard.”

SOY SAUCE

One of soy sauce’s main forerunners was a flavorful Chinese paste known as

jiang, which emerged before 256 B.C. and was made with fermented meat, fish or grain. Sometime around A.D. 960-1279, jiangyou appeared—a more watery condiment, made by boiling and fermenting soybeans in brine. By the 17th century, Japanese soy sauce— shoyu, predecessor of the English term—had evolved into one quite similar to the liquid found in

kitchens today.

TAHINI

Though several ancient cultures ground sesame seeds into a condiment, it was in the 13th century that cooks in Persia first pulverized the seeds with oil into a spread called ardeh, later known as tahina, from the Arabic verb “to crush.” The high price of the seeds made tahini a luxury product for several centuries; like salt among Phoenicians or cacao beans among certain Mesoamerican cultures, sesame seeds were sometimes used

as currency.

KETCHUP

In southern China c.

300 B.C., chefs introduced a sauce called ge-thcup or

koe-cheup, made from fermented fish and soybeans. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Dutch and English merchants liked koe-cheup so much they brought it home with them. In England, early ketchup (or catsup) used fermented oysters or anchovies (or fruits and vegetables). Tomatoes, which Europeans long deemed poisonous, didn’t enter recipes until

1830s America.