How Salt Changed The World?
The History of Salt and Pepper - We use salt commonly in our every day lives. Salt is in most of our food and sits on many of our dinner tables. In the past salt was a coveted possession and many died in the pursuit of salt or as they called it white gold. Salt was once even divided by class - table salt was kept for the poor and Himalayan Crystal Salt was only used in the presence of royalty.
In the primal times no one cared for salt. Salt wasn't a concern because man received their daily sodium intake from the blood of the animals they were consuming. Blood's makeup is largely part salt and minerals/nutrients.
As humanity became more civilized and moved in the direction of agriculture and animal domestication the need for salt took a rise. It was not only valued as a season but also for its use in the preservation of food.
Allowing us to preserve food meant that we had freedom from the dependence on food availability by season. This meant man could now travel and carry his food with him.
Why Was Salt So Important?
Salt was always extremely challenging to come by as it was a highly sought after item used in trade. It was valued so highly that it took on a form of monetary exchange. The Romans governed the price of salt and would increase its value during war time to aid in funding. After war time they would decrease salt's price again to make it available for the common citizen. Roman soldiers even received their wages in salt. In fact, the word salary is derived from the Latin word Salarium. Salarium means to be paid in salt. "Sal" is the Latin root meaning salt. The Romans valued salt so much so that they even constructed new roads for the transportation of salt. A road named Via Salaria began in Rome and led straight to the Adriatic Sea. The production of evaporating sea water into salt is still a method of salt making in use today.
There are many stories based around salt within our American History. It is said that salt was a major conductor in the outcome of many wars fought in our country. In the Revolutionary War, American's who held their loyalty with the British were used as pawns to intercept the enemies salt stock. This in turn diminished the enemies ability to preserve their war time food. In the War of 1812, the government was so poor that they opted to pay their soldiers in salt brine.
Salt was once a very coveted resource. Think about that next time you sit down at your festive table. A resource you now use so freely everyday - was once a resource that people died for.
Why Was Pepper So Valuable?
Pepper is salt's more intriguing cousin. Dark pepper started in Kerala, India and has been sent out from South Asia for around 4,000 years. Pepper was fundamental flavoring in India (it was regularly alluded to as "dark gold") and was of extraordinary incentive as a conventional medication, highlighting in early therapeutic records, for example, the Susrutha Samhita. Like salt, pepper was an uncommon and costly item: the Romans exchanged it and peppercorns have been found in antiquated Egyptian burial chambers. It is said that Alaric the Visigoth and Attila the Hun each requested from Rome a payment of in excess of a huge load of pepper when they attacked the city in the fifth century.
Pepper was well known in antiquated Greece and Rome for its restorative properties and long pepper was accepted to diminish mucus and increment semen. It wasn't well before Romans who could manage began to utilize it to prepare their food and Apicius' De re coquinaria, a third-century cookbook, remembers pepper for a considerable lot of its plans. Long pepper's high status likewise laid the ground for other impactful flavors, similar to dark pepper which is by and large what we use today. Different kinds of pepper imported included Ethiopian pepper (Grains of Paradise) and Cubeb pepper, a sort of long pepper from China.
In the good 'ol days, Arabia had an immense syndication over shipping lanes and this proceeded into bygone eras, while Italian states like Venice and Genoa likewise controlled the transportation lines once the zest arrived at the Mediterranean implying that they could charge exploitative costs. As the remainder of Europe burnt out on being from cash on hand, pilgrims, for example, Christopher Columbus and Sir Francis Drake went out to build up their own courses and as it turned out to be all the more promptly accessible, it became less expensive and customary individuals had the option to manage the cost of it. Territorial cooking styles started fusing pepper into their food sources close by local flavors and spices which brought about ordinary zest mixes, for example, garam masala in India, ras el hanout in Morocco, quatre épices in France and Cajun and snap mixes in the Americas.
Why is Pepper Important?
Pepper was important to the point that a Guild of Pepperers was set up in the UK in 1180 and was liable for keeping up norms for the immaculateness of flavors and for the setting of specific loads and measures. Peppercorns were extravagant and were acknowledged in lieu of cash in shares, expenses and lease, frequently known as the peppercorn lease, the importance of which is today totally different as it presently alludes to a minuscule installment. In Germany there are records of entire towns paying rent with peppercorns.
In huge (and well off) families, imported pepper was beat in a pestle and mortar before it was served at the table. Likewise with salt, it is easily proven wrong whether pepper was really used to mask the kind of foul meat as numerous rich individuals could bear the cost of new food, albeit more unfortunate individuals may have utilized it for this reason once broad development and exchange made it moderate. The Victorian British common laborers purchased pepper in enormous amounts, as a rule in ground structure, despite the fact that it supposedly was perilous and papers of the time were loaded with outrage accounts of pepper being tainted with different added substances.
Indeed, pepper wasn't generally so well known. During the Middle Ages and indeed in the Renaissance period, pepper was related with despairing, and some picked to utilize better, more energetic flavors. Yet, with the improvement of current French cooking during the Enlightenment, pepper indeed got well known as Francois Pierre de la Varenne, France's first VIP culinary expert, urged perusers to prepare their food with it, close by another buddy, salt. Doubtlessly this matching was supported as pepper was viewed as the solitary zest that supplemented salt and that the two didn't overwhelm the genuine taste of food. In Britain, this training was immediately received and we have followed it from that point onward.
So does everybody love salt and pepper as much as us Brits? Clearly, the French are fans however it's observable while holidaying in Europe's hotter climes that salt and pepper aren't actually utilized so a lot. On the Mediterranean, oil and vinegar are all the more normally utilized albeit dark pepper is a staple for Italian feasting. Indeed, until a couple of many years back most Britons burned-through ground pepper yet the flood of modest occasions and the deluge of Italian cafés in the UK during the 1970s may be answerable for our inclination for processors loaded up with dark peppercorns. In China and Japan, as we as a whole know, clam and soy sauce is all the more ordinarily accessible and in South America jugs of tabasco-style sauce (once in a while called 'Chile') is pervasive. As world food turns out to be ever well known here in the UK, we may not use as much salt and pepper as we may once have yet there is as yet a spot for it at the table
Source Pepper: thehistoryvault.co.uk
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