SAVORY: Roman soldiers didn’t just bring home the bacon – they brought home the salt, too. While its primary use was food preservation, having table salt during mealtimes marked you as a man or woman with status. Imagine that! The soul of savory was reserved for society’s elite and soldiers actually accepted it as payment for risking life and limb, showing just how much they’d sacrifice for flavor.
SWEET: ‘Give me sugar or give me death!’ is not really a quote, but it should be. The legislation which sparked the fight for American independence was the British Sugar Act instituted in 1746. Just think for a minute. Why not just avoid conflict and live without sugar? Inconceivable! Britain knew that no decent man would give up sweet flavors, and since the New World colonists were decent men they were not going to simply let their God-given sugar be taken by any British nobleman, not even the king! Surprisingly, the ’Right to Sweet Flavors’ never became an amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights, but it just might be if politics interferes again.
BITTER: When considering children’s reaction to Swedish herbal medicine, one naturally concludes that bitter flavors are despised as scum of the earth. However, in the right hands, and with the right mix, and presto – bitter becomes a human magnet. Consider the coffee bean and the cocoa bean, two astringent legumes that are ubiquitous in the cuisines of the world.
The South American economy ran on cocoa for countless centuries before Montezuma introduced it to the Spaniards who in turn introduced them to milk, and then to hazelnuts, and then to the French, and then to sugar. That is the sloppiest history lesson I’ve ever written so let’s make it short and just say that cocoa is really connected. Coffee’s introduction to mankind is not as well-known, but the fact that so many people would rather drink it than breathe air proves the magnitude of its bitter grip on society.
SPICE: Spices are the single greatest reason mankind pursued conquest in six of the seven continents. The basis for the world economy was born in spice and even in this modern world billions of lives depend on it. When the conquest-hungry Western Europeans found huge flavor resources concentrated in Central and Southeast Asia they went after it likes bees to honey. Although it is dumb to fight over flavor, it is a fact that mankind’s quest for flavor caused the occupation of several nations; the use of slaves, ships, regulations and legislation to avoid war. Since laws on sharing never really work, fighting for spices often meant war.
HEAT: The Manadonese in Indonesia say they will only revolt if the government raises the price on chili peppers. Hearing something like that gives you that uneasy feeling like when the school bully cracked a joke about beating you up and you laughed nervously, not sure whether he really meant it. Ask anyone whose blood lines are steeped in chili peppers if they want to live in a world without heat – most will probably say no. Nowadays the real tough guys venture into worlds of discomfort previously unknown to humans. Flavor pain ranges from the Scotch bonnets popular in Jamaican cuisine, jalapeños for practically anything Mexican, and the rest-in-peace heat of the naga bhut jolokia (ghost pepper).
So you see flavor is a treasure just like precious metal and stone. It brings out the best and worst of mankind. Where there is abundance it is shared. Where there is poor supply, the big chiefs hoard and defend it. Mankind’s quest for flavor will only end if we lose the ability to taste. Don’t bet on that!
