its special and unprecedented ability to provide something for everyone makes it the Esperanto of cuisine. Once you start looking for the sources of human variability, though, the old orthodoxy goes out the window.

A lot of theories fly around about MSG, but it’s worth pointing out that glutamates appear naturally in all sorts of foods, from tomatoes to beef to parmesan cheese.Mustard is not only great on hotdogs and burgers but also for dipping sausages into, for glazing ham, and as an addition or base for other sauces. To make the burgers: heat the olive oil in a pan and cook the onions on a medium heat until soft and transparent in colour.

Pour into a suitable baking dish, sprinkle with the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven for 25-30 mins until golden brown and bubbling.Grown by our specialist seed supplier in Suffolk, our yellow mustard seeds give our Sweet Mustard Ketchup that extra kick. This award-winning delicious Ketchup sauce and Mayo range is available to suit all tastes who enjoy a rich tomato flavour with a touch of mustard heat. A few centuries later, the Greek historian Pliny shared a method to treat scorpion stings using the ground-up seeds of a common plant. The flavor components would be divided two ways: elements picked up by the tongue and elements picked up by the nose.

King Louis XI made it an essential part of his diet, going so far as to travel with a personal pot of the sauce so he’d never have to eat a meal without it. Then one day the Heublein Company, which owned Grey Poupon, discovered something remarkable: if you gave people a mustard taste test, a significant number had only to try Grey Poupon once to switch from yellow mustard. Mustard (31%) (Water, Mustard Seed, Spirit Vinegar, Salt, Turmeric), Raw Cane Sugar, Wholegrain Mustard (15%) (Cider Vinegar, Mustard Seed, Water, Sea Salt, Black Peppercorns, Allspice, Chillies), Cider Vinegar, Sunflower Oil, Mustard Flour (2%), Turmeric, Sea Salt. The Romans invaded the land now known as France in the 1st century BCE, and the mustard seeds they brought with them thrived in the region’s fertile soil. It was inexpensive, which meant that it had a firm lock on the mass market, and it was a condiment, not an ingredient, which meant that it could be applied at the discretion of the food eater, not the food preparer.A lot of food historians doubt how much influence this could have had on public perception, though, arguing that lead poisoning takes too long to develop to get connected to any single dish. Moskowitz is a man of uncommon exuberance and persuasiveness: if he had been your freshman statistics professor, you would today be a statistician. Made with a combination of wholegrain and smooth mustards and a measure of sugar and spices for perfect balance.

On the other side was a renegade band of ketchup manufacturers, who believed that the preservative puzzle could be solved with the application of culinary science. If you do require precise ingredient information you should consult the manufacturer, whose contact details will appear on the packaging or label. I bought the mayo last time I saw you at a market and it is amazing so keep up the great work as I will need these supplies forever more. The post-benzoate ketchups also doubled the concentration of sugar—so now ketchup was also sweet—and all along ketchup had been salty and bitter. While mustard was flourishing, ketchup was still figuring out how it would leave its mark on the white T-shirt of history.

But that makes it easy to forget that sometimes happiness can be found in having what we’ve always had and everyone else is having. Tomato ketchup is a nineteenth-century creation—the union of the English tradition of fruit and vegetable sauces and the growing American infatuation with the tomato. Happiness, in one sense, is a function of how closely our world conforms to the infinite variety of human preference. Lovely to use the Original and Kick as condiments or by adding the more fiery varieties, Bad Boy Kick and Big Kick as seasoning within your cooking for extra flavour.