Articles In This Issue
S ERVING S OUTH T EXAS AND S URROUNDING A REAS F OR O VER 37 Y EARS Vol.XXXIX, No. 5
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Page 1: Pat Farrell Page 3: SABOR Page 7: The Way I See It Featuring: Cathey Meyer Page 13: NARPM Article Featuring: Brenda Davila Page 15: Associate Spotlight Featuring: Legacy Mutual Page 17: SARREB Article Featuring: Brian M. Paris Page 22 - 23: News Flash
May 2021
What Is On Your Table?! Pat Farrell / Contributing Writer
PRSRT STD U.S. Postage PAID San Antonio, Texas Permit #1416
When folks sit down to eat, whether it be at home or at a restaurant, they will usually find salt and pepper on the table, but what other condiments might they also want to use? The first recognized use of the word condiment, something used to enhance the flavor of food according to Merriam-Webster, was in the 15th century and was originally derived from Latin condimentum and later from Middle French condire which means to season. So, in addition to the salt and pepper, the condiments used at the table or at the stove might include things like spices, herbs, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, hot sauce, etc. Well, between two of the more popular condiments in the United States, which would you prefer to use on your hot dog – mustard, ketchup (or catsup) or both? According to an informal Facebook poll about their popularity, mustard came out slightly ahead of ketchup in a limited number polling test. And while both items can be found in about 97% of American homes, sales of the two products in 2017 showed mustard at $433 million, with French’s yellow mustard a clear winner over Grey Poupon, while for ketchup, sales were $765 million, where Heinz came out on top fol-
lowed far behind by Hunts. I can’t help but wonder how many of us who have used take-out from various restaurants or fast-food places now have a multitude of those little packets of ketchup or mustard in our kitchen or office drawers. To date more than 40 species of mustard plants have been identified and it is interesting to learn just how we arrived at the container of French’s yellow mustard on the table. Thought to have originated in Egypt, since mustard seeds were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, the seeds have been in use for about 5,000 years, moving from country to country, as both a seasoning and for medical applications in an attempt to cure everything from a toothache to the bubonic plague. As use of the seed by the Greeks moved on to the Romans and then to the Gauls, the seed became firmly settled in Europe and the processing of the seed was then taken over by the monasteries in the ninth century. The process at the time used primarily brown or black seeds that when mixed with a liquid produced a dark colored mustard so that over the years both the Dijon and the Grey Poupon type mustards became popular along with Coleman’s which used brown and white seeds to produce a powered mustard in England. It was at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair that French’s yellow mustard, made from only white seeds, was introduced and used on the hot dog that had been created in 1805. The word mustard is thought to be derived from Mosto the name for a young unfermented wine used to mix with the mustard seed. While mustard was around in the Stone Age, ketchup was only first recognized in southern China in 300 BC and was known as ke-chiap, but surprisingly enough it contained no tomato but was rather a fermented fish sauce, actually a paste, made from fish entrails, meat byproducts and soybeans. Doesn’t that sound yummy? Appetizing or not by our standards, the paste recipes travelled the trade routes from China to Indonesia and to the Philippines.
From there British traders took the paste recipes home and promptly altered them so that by the 18th century in Europe ketchup was made from other products like lobster, oysters, mushrooms, or plums and peaches (still no tomatoes) combined with liquids like white wine and various spices that were boiled down to a syrupy consistency. It wasn’t until 1812 that the first ketchup containing tomatoes was introduced by horticulturalist James Mease; however, preservation became a problem as the tomatoes would quickly decompose, so to overcome this in 1876 the Heinz Company introduced a ketchup formula that consisted of tomatoes, distilled vinegar (a preservative), brown sugar, salt and various spices, and they also pioneered the use of glass bottles so people could “see what they were buying.” That is the ketchup that most of us have on the table (or in the fridge today)! Though mustard and ketchup, along with salt and pepper are probably the most recognized condiments, there are others that are popular with some people but not with others. Included here one would find mayonnaise (hold the mayo!), said to be the creation of the Duke de Richelieu’s French chef in 1756 to use during a feast celebrating the Duke’s defeat of the British at Port Mahon on the Balearic island of Menorca, although some claim there had been similar sauces prior to that time, with most of them containing garlic. Various food historians have claimed the origin of the word mayonnaise to be derived from: the name of the defeated town mahonnaise; from the French verb, manier meaning to stir; from an old French word mayeu meaning egg yolk and lastly from the sauce popular in Bayonne, France that was called bayonnaise. Regardless of the sauce name’s origin it became a very popular item throughout Europe, and in the early 1900s, when Richard Hellmann, a German immigrant, opened a delicatessen in New York City delicatessen, the salads served there were made with his wife’s homemade may-
onnaise recipe and were an immediate hit with the New Yorkers. When his customers began asking to purchase the sauce alone he started to produce it in bulk and eventually packed the mayonnaise into glass jars. In 1913, Hellmann built his first factory in Astoria, New York and the rest as they say, “is history.” Hellmann’s was eventually acquired by Best Foods Inc., a West Coast corporation. And then there is hot sauce which has been around since the Aztec’s started making it from chili peppers in about 7000 BC and is in great demand today in Texas. Evidence of hot sauces have been found in ancient ruins and ships all over the world, showing that it has been important in making food more palatable as well as being used for medicinal purposes by aiding in digestion. One of the oldest hot sauce brands in the United States was started by Edmund McIlhenny (1815-1890) from the peppers he grew on Avery Island, a place not far from New Orleans, LA, and trademarked the sauce’s name, Tabasco. It is interesting that the tabasco peppers are still grown on Avery Island and are then mashed, put into oak barrels with salt and left in a cold warehouse for three years before being bottled and sold. Other brands in use locally include, but are not limited to, Texas Pete Hot Sauce and Sriracha Hot Chili sauce. Horseradish is one of my favorite condiments and is always available in my refrigerator! How it got that name though is interesting because it has nothing to do with horses. The root vegetable, radish, was originally grown near the sea and so the German word for horseradish is meerrettich meaning sea radish, but the English pronounced the German word mareradish, which considering the size to which the root grows it was later changed from mareradish to horseradish. As far back as 1500 BC the Egyptians knew about horseradish as did the early Greeks who would use it as a rub for lower back pain, and today at the Seder tables for the Passover, one might find horseradish which symbolizes the bitter-