National Salt Awareness Week begins today in the UK.
We’ll leave it to medical experts to tell you how much salt is right for you and your diet.
Instead, we will build awareness about a broader question: why is it that we keep salt and pepper shakers together at the table?
The answer is, Francois Pierre La Varenne.
He was a chef for King Louis XIV of France, and his cookbook from the 1650s, Le Cuisinier François, greatly shaped French cuisine (and, by extension, food around the world).
One hallmark of La Varenne’s style of cooking was to split meals between sweet and savory, instead of lumping them together.
He also pushed for an order of operations for entrees.
Sugary recipes shut an appetite down, so they had to go after the salty ones, which made an eater want to continue.
In addition to playing down the sweetness, he played down the spice.
His boss, King Louis XIV thought the overly seasoned foods that were often served to the well-off in those times were gross, to the point that, according to Gizmodo, he banned nearly all of them.
One of the exceptions was salt, which accentuated the flavors of the ingredients rather than changing them.
Another was parsley, which every cook knows is about as unobtrusive as an ingredient can be.
And the third was pepper, which did add a little flavor, but not a lot, and it worked especially well with salt.
Over time, salt and pepper just became the standard seasoning duo for this style of cooking, and when eaters wanted to add their own seasoning to the meal instead of just letting the cook do it, they got salt and pepper shakers.
And eventually ketchup and mustard bottles, and sugar bowls, and little packets of jelly and syrup and honey, and butter pats, and so on.
Maybe we won’t tell King Louis XIV about all those.
Starting today in New Zealand, the Golden Shears World Shearing And Woolhandling Championship.
When the competition started in the 1960s it was so popular that the military had to do crowd control.
Hopefully this year’s event will be a little calmer.
Why Are Salt and Pepper Paired? (AllRecipes)
Golden Shears World Championships
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