Cayenne, or red pepper, with its biting flavor, is a fair representative of the whole brotherhood of condiments, which includes a number of substances which sting and smart as they go down the throat, chief of which are mustard, ginger, black pepper, spice, pepper-sauce, and other hot sauces, horseradish, etc. None of these substances are of any value as foods. They are used only to impart to our foods such flavors as are thought to be agreeable. Whether the flavor is an agreeable one or not, depends wholly upon the habits or tastes of the individual.
The taste for condiments is wholly an artificial one. An article which is much liked in one country is often considered loathsome in another. An American palate would repel with disgust a soup flavored with asafoetida, but by a Persian or North German palate this article is considered of a most delicate and agreeable flavor. The gnappee, or rotten fish, used as a relish by the East Indian, is no more offensive to a natural taste than the rotten cheese so much enjoyed by continental epicures.
The botanist is well acquainted with the fact that poisonous plants can be distinguished by their flavor from those which are wholesome or harmless, with unerring certainty. This fact is of great use to a traveler in a strange land. Thus, when he finds a new plant, he has only to taste it, and he at once knows its character. If it has a bitter, acrid, smarting, or pungent taste, it is unwholesome or poisonous; if it has a bland or agreeable flavor, he may safely eat it, if it is a fruit or other edible substance, and will suffer no harm. Savages are acquainted with this means of judging of the properties of plants, and make constant use of it. A soldier on the frontier gave a spiced pickle to a starving Indian. The hungry savage spat it out with great vehemence, and, imagining that he had been made the victim of a cruel joke, was with difficulty restrained from executing vengeance upon his would-be benefactor.
The stinging, burning flavors which some substances contain were put into them to warn us that they are unfit for food, and are liable to do us harm if we eat them. Yet human taste has become so perverted that it demands a little of these very repulsive flavors to be added to foods in which nature has placed only those flavoring substances which are harmless and useful. A drop of pure oil of cayenne is almost as deadly as an equal amount of prussic acid or oil of tobacco.
Condiments are unnecessary. A natural taste does not need to be stimulated by things which burn and smart as they go down into the stomach. It finds in the natural flavors of good foods all that is needed to tempt the palate. The over-stimulation of the unnatural flavors given to food by exciting condiments, constantly and in a most powerful manner tends to gluttony and all its attendant ill consequences. A stomach which is served by a palate that is unperverted, is not likely to be overworked.
Such condiments are not only unnatural and useless, but they are directly harmful. All condiments are irritants. Mustard or cayenne applied to the surface will raise a blister. Will they not blister the delicate membrane of the stomach as well as the much tougher covering of the body, the skin? A little pepper or mustard in the eye will create a violent inflammation. The only reason why the same effects are not seen when these irritating substances are eaten, is that the mucous membrane of the stomach is gradually accustomed to them, so that the worst effects are not produced, just as the skin sometimes becomes so accustomed to the contact of mustard that a blister can not be produced by it.
The first effect of condiments is to excite the stomach to greater activity than is natural to it, so that it secretes a larger amount of gastric juice, and will for the time digest more food than usual; but the effect of this excessive activity is to wear out the digestive organs prematurely, so that it becomes necessary to use an increasing amount of the condiment, just as the whip is used to stimulate a tired horse. After a time, the organ becomes so exhausted that the whip fails to produce the desired response, and the individual finds himself the victim of a horrible dyspepsia that baffles the skill of many physicians. The trouble is, the poor stomach has been goaded to work until its vital resources have been completely exhausted, and the doctor's stimulating remedies are as useless as would be a whip to a poor horse whose limbs were paralyzed by overwork. The only cure for such a case lies in dispensing with condiments of all sorts, and giving tired nature a chance to recuperate her wasted energies. How much better to stop the whipping process before this unhappy period has been reached; or, better still, never to begin the use of these stomach whips which custom places upon almost every table in the land!
But the stomach is not the only organ which suffers from the use of these fiery substances. After they have been absorbed, they quickly find their way to the liver, and here they do a work of mischief which soon manifests itself in “biliousness” and all the various uncomfortable symptoms which denote a torpid liver. It has been remarked by eminent medical authorities that diseases of the liver are very much more prevalent in warm countries than in other parts of the world, and they do not hesitate to ascribe this fact to the larger use of pepper, curry-powder, and other hot spices of these countries.
Salt is one of the most generally used of all the long list of substances known as condiments. It is unquestionably true, however, that there are many millions of human beings who live healthful lives without it, as the natives of Siberia and of South Africa. Indeed, an abundance of facts are available in support of the belief that a very little salt is an abundance, and that much harm often results from the too free use of this condiment.
In conclusion, we wish to urge as a cogent argument against the use of condiments, that it is a practice which deprives us of much that nature intended us to enjoy. Those pungent substances which are commonly employed as condiments are so acrid, and so pronounced in their effects upon the sense of taste, that they obscure nearly all of those delicate but delightful flavors which nature has put into all wholesome foods, and which ought to be amply sufficient to recommend them to a healthy palate. Taste an apple after having eaten a spiced pickle or a well-peppered oyster. It seems almost devoid of flavor, whereas at another time it would have been thought to be delicious.
The best spice is hunger, and the best of all appetizers, a simple taste.
