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| NaCl (halite) |
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| Piper nigrum |
Compare and contrast:
Salt is colorless, inorganic, water soluble, essential for life, and ubiquitous.
Pepper is usually colored, organic, polymeric, water insoluble, non-essential, and mostly confined to subtropical regions.
Sodium chloride is divisible into smaller and smaller subunits -- from a large chunk of halite to a single subunit of NaCl. Most of the world's salt is trapped in the oceans or found where ancient seas dried and receded. Salt is easily mined or obtained at coastal regions. Inland communities in Europe often needed more salt than they could produce locally which led to a network of salt roads. Salt was historically used as a food preservative and less so as flavor. Salt regulates fluids in cells and the sodium plays an active role in nerve transmission -- you can't get more alive than that.
Black pepper comes from the fruit of piper nigrum which is native to southern India. The active ingredient in pepper is called piperine and is medicinally interesting in its own right.* Piperine is easily extracted from dried peppercorns, also known as drupes.
Celebrate spices!
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* For the chemically inclined, the molecular structure of piperine is:
The nitrogen ringed moiety sticking up is called piperidine and is a commonly used subunit in many modern drugs. The chemical name for piperine is
1-[5-(1,3-benzodioxol-5-yl)-1-oxo-2,4-pentadienyl]piperidine, showing that the parent morpheme is piperidine and which should be decipherable to anyone who paid attention at "The Awful Chemical Language."
20 comments:
I'll bet money that Palladian has a vial of piperonal in storage somewhere.
Obviously you don't know the real
salt and pepa!
Who was the "salt" in that combo?
"Salt and pepper to taste." And to taste, too!
I watched that PBS show on salt yesterday. I only caught a few minutes of it, but it was interesting.
I am a big black pepper fan. If you have ever had vine ripened black pepper, it is exceptional. I had some on Pohnpei which was great. Tellicherry from India is also very good.
But the key with any black pepper is grinding it yourself. Once ground, all the nuance is quickly lost.
Ooooh baby baby!
I read that one way the French punished some prisoners (in the dark past) was to make their bread without salt. No salt in any of their other food.
The end result was they died.
NaCl gets a bad rap in the modern world. We would die without it.
Salt also played a huge role in the Civil War. The South had limited sources of salt and the North worked at limiting what they did have. See Salt in the American Civil War.
Hey what about the Salt talks?
I think that was when Julia Child refused to put Salt on James Beards frankfurter back in the day.
Although both may have been at one time very valuable, salt, seems to me to have held more sway, more staying power, when it came to language.
"The salt of the earth..."
"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea."
Whereas pepper...
"I can't do coffee, but I can do Dr. Pepper." Cher
Well, I found some, but they are scarcely memorable.
What about Pepper Potts?
I'll bet money that Palladian has a vial of piperonal in storage somewhere.
I certainly do. In fact, I have an aluminum flask with a kilogram of heliotropin (as it's called in perfumery) crystals, as well as a bottle of a 10% solution in dipropylene glycol. It's one of the earlier synthetics used in modern perfumery and one of the components of American baby powder scent. Of course, it's now classed as an allergen and (in Europe) its use is regulated. The perfume in which it played its best "starring" role is Guerlain's Après L'ondée (good luck finding it though).
Perhaps surprising to some, essential oil of piper nigrum is used frequently in perfumery; it's one of my favorite ingredients.
"Biblical" Scene
Arriving at the salt mines, we encountered a working mine that appeared from out of the sandy haze of the desert, a mythical scene from the pages of the Bible. The mine was cut out of an ancient seabed, an empty sandy region that stretches in every direction. Several hundred men work the mines as indentured slaves, chipping way at the ground beneath the Earth in musty, salt-choked caves.
Once the salt has been cut from the mine, slabs are loaded onto camel caravans. The caravans head south towards Timbuktu, traveling nearly two weeks through featureless sand dunes that warp the mind's depth perceptions.
In Sahara, Salt-Hauling Camel Trains Struggle On. There is a word for that. Caravan. [salt on camels]
James Dolan said...
Obviously you don't know the real
salt and pepa!
Nuh-uh. Spinderella was the flyest of dem all, sucka.
I think that was when Julia Child refused to put Salt on James Beards frankfurter back in the day.
Jim Beard never served sausage to the ladies.
Although I do have to say that Pepa looks really hot lately, but she cray cray.
Thanks for the link, JAL!
One reason the Confederacy died i 1865 was lack of salt. Salt was vital as a preservative, especially for pork and beef.
Salary is from L sal, salis, salt.
Halogen is from Greek hals "salt" + -gen "giving birth to."
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