Put Down the Pepper Grinder, Ma'am

Because black pepper should be treated like cloves or cinnamon

Photo: Getty Images

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From the Archives: From time to time we'll re-post some of our most popular pieces from other venues. We figure many of you may not have seen them or, even if you have, you might like to see them again. Like old friends.

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A recent Google search returned more than 468 million hits for the phrase “salt and pepper.” Even accounting for references to hair color, it suggests the two ingredients enjoy a cozy relationship. Too cozy, I’d say: Over the years, I’ve moved away from robotically adding salt and pepper to every savory dish I cook.

Salt, while it obviously has a recognizable flavor that can stand on its own (on a pretzel, for example), is generally used to heighten, balance, and round out other flavors.

Pepper, though, is all about its flavor: Think of the Roman pasta preparation cacio e pepe, where that flavor is, I’ll estimate, two-thirds of the appeal. Pepper is a spice, like cloves and cinnamon, which raises the question of whether you would use cloves or cinnamon in just about every dish you cooked. A response might be, “No. They’re too distinctive; they’d intrude; they’d grow monotonous.” But is pepper any less distinctive and intrusive? No: It’s just that we’ve grown accustomed to it, at least in the Western cuisines that are the foundation of what I for one cook much of the time.