condiments and sauces fascinate me these days, but it wasn’t always so. I used to just take them all for granted and stopped at “I like this” or “I don’t like that”.
I read this 25% foodie douche / 75% super interesting book titled Salt: A World History by this guy Mark Kurlansky. it totally opened my eyes to certain flavors or notions of flavors that come and go over time and in far flung geographies. like we think of ketchup as this purely western / industrial condiment, but it has these historical analogues where something like it comes and goes and spreads or travels around many times over the millennia.
there’s also this book called something like “660 Curries” by this guy who tried to catalogue all the distinct ones from South Asia and he talks about how curry is basically a word for “sauce”.
it made me think about the idea of like Ur-sauces and how if I had a kitchen/herb garden, some salt and some ingenuity, I might be able to make my own archetypal condiments to jazz up and provide an exciting variety in a future where I’m just eating mostly beans and rice over and over lol.
now I’m obsessed with uncovering the sauces and condiments that are popular in other places. they are often so ubiquitous, people don’t even mention them when discussing the cuisine of their home place. like they would be embarrassed to mention how much they love their favorite condiment. my first meal I ever had in the UK I was super excited to see brown sauce on the table, lol. it is indeed good.
It’s also interesting to think about what “sauce” means as a functional part of cooking. Westernised Chinese food tends to have a thick gloopy starch sauce that in China you would only use on specific dishes. Which lead a lot of people to ask me questions like “what sauce do you cook that in?” about stir-fry recipes I gave them and that question makes zero sense to me. But then I realised I just don’t view soy sauce, etc as “sauces” because they’re more like salt-replacing seasonings? Hard to explain
condiments and sauces fascinate me these days, but it wasn’t always so. I used to just take them all for granted and stopped at “I like this” or “I don’t like that”.
I read this 25% foodie douche / 75% super interesting book titled Salt: A World History by this guy Mark Kurlansky. it totally opened my eyes to certain flavors or notions of flavors that come and go over time and in far flung geographies. like we think of ketchup as this purely western / industrial condiment, but it has these historical analogues where something like it comes and goes and spreads or travels around many times over the millennia.
there’s also this book called something like “660 Curries” by this guy who tried to catalogue all the distinct ones from South Asia and he talks about how curry is basically a word for “sauce”.
it made me think about the idea of like Ur-sauces and how if I had a kitchen/herb garden, some salt and some ingenuity, I might be able to make my own archetypal condiments to jazz up and provide an exciting variety in a future where I’m just eating mostly beans and rice over and over lol.
now I’m obsessed with uncovering the sauces and condiments that are popular in other places. they are often so ubiquitous, people don’t even mention them when discussing the cuisine of their home place. like they would be embarrassed to mention how much they love their favorite condiment. my first meal I ever had in the UK I was super excited to see brown sauce on the table, lol. it is indeed good.
It’s also interesting to think about what “sauce” means as a functional part of cooking. Westernised Chinese food tends to have a thick gloopy starch sauce that in China you would only use on specific dishes. Which lead a lot of people to ask me questions like “what sauce do you cook that in?” about stir-fry recipes I gave them and that question makes zero sense to me. But then I realised I just don’t view soy sauce, etc as “sauces” because they’re more like salt-replacing seasonings? Hard to explain