With the proliferation of cooking channels and shows, it seems chefs are taking more culinary adventures. Perhaps the most outrageous adventure is featured on MasterChef where "home cooks" prepare dishes fit for restaurants.
This season's finale featured such dishes as crispy pig's ear with dandelion and fennel salad, spiced rack of lamb with red quinoa and carrot pure, and cherry meringue with chocolate and almonds. Definitely not the kind of food that I grew up eating.
My mother was raised in England and had an english-style of cooking. The food was always nutritious and kept us well fed but it tended more towards "boiled beef and carrots" than "grilled octopus with chickpeas and chorizo salad".
To put it simply, I grew up on bland food. Salt and pepper, with maybe one or two other spices, were pretty much it in our food. In all fairness to my mother, I can remember her cooking a curry when I was about six and none of us kids would eat it.
It turns out young children have a very different palate than adults. Food tastes very different to a six year old than to someone sixteen or sixty. Hot spicy dishes can be overwhelming so maybe it was a good thing that my mother minimized the use of herbs and spices.
Indeed, using minimal amounts of spice in food seems to be the case throughout much of northern Europe historically. This is in sharp contrast to southern Europe where spices are used heavily and in decided contrast to the tropics where spices are found in every dish.
Cornell biochemist, Paul Sherman, became interested in the distribution of herbs and spices in foods. Together with Jennifer Billing, he analyzed indigenous recipes from all over the world. They were able to plot the number and amount of spices in foods as both a function of latitude and location.
They discovered that a typical traditional Swedish dish contains a single spice, typically salt and lots of it, but fully one third of the Swedish recipes that they examined had no spices at all.
However, as one travels towards the equator, the number of spices and herbs found in local traditional cuisine increases significantly. A typical dish, such as a curry, might have six or more separate spices. A friend of mine told me that the secret to the taste of his curry was the combination of 22 different spices that he includes.
Generally speaking, as the climate gets hotter, so does the food.
There are a number of plausible reasons for this phenomenon but from a biochemical point of view, the most likely reason is that herbs and spices contain chemical compounds that have superb anti-microbial activity. They fight off the bacteria that lead to food spoilage.
Spice are naturally occurring preservatives with some spices being so effective, they are capable of wiping out every food-spoilage bug that they have been tested on.
This is because the active ingredients in spices are typically secondary metabolites of plants. They are compounds plants produce for purposes other than just basic metabolism or staying alive. In most cases, secondary metabolites have evolved to help plant defend themselves against biotic enemies.
The logic of this evolution stems from the simple fact that plants are stationary creatures. As they cannot run from prey, they have essentially two defensive choices. They can develop a thick, impenetrable skin or they can engage in chemical warfare.
For most plants, the latter route has dominated. The bitter taste of a plant dissuades any animals from eating it as does the burning heat of capsaicin.
Each seemingly harmless herb, such as oregano or basil, makes upwards of twenty compounds lethal to microbes, parasites, and pathogens that might kill or harm the plant. The four most deadly spices and herbs are onions, garlic, oregano, and allspice. They each produce compounds capable of killing every microbe on which researchers have tested them. It's no wonder that these spices are used pretty much worldwide.
Of course, plants are not only deadly to microbes. For some mammals, spice in a meal can be deadly. There are many plants with secondary metabolites that are poisonous to humans. Dogs, for example, shouldn't eat raw onion as it can lead to death.
Black pepper is an interesting spice as it is not an anti-bacterial but it has synergistic effects that enhance the killing power of onions, garlic, etc. The compounds in black pepper open up the cell wall and allow the penetration by the chemical agent from other spices which then destroy the microbe.
On average, recipes from around the world use 4 spices. In warm climates, where spoilage is quicker, a wide variety of spices means healthier food. On food shows, though, everything seems to need spicing up - especially crispy pig's ears or grilled octopus.
