When our not-very-finicky ancestors foraged for food in the wild, they picked whatever

edible stuff they could find, and supplemented it with hunting and fishing. The art of preparing food

was pretty basic. But once they figured out how to start their own fire instead of waiting for

lightning to strike, incipient cookery and kitchen science came to life. It was limited to roasting

meat and fish, which was an enormous improvement over eating them raw. It is not likely they used

any spices and herbs in their incipient stone-age cuisine.

Raw fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts didn't need much improvement. They were freshly

picked at the peak of their ripeness, much fresher than the ones we get even at our local farmers'

markets today. But in the beginning, humans fed themselves strictly for survival purposes, not for

any hedonistic pleasures such as accenting flavors. They tuned in to whether the food was edible,

inedible or poisonous. That is, after all, the primary purpose of our taste buds.

Once humans developed agriculture about 10,000 years ago, food became more and more

readily available, and staple foods like rice, wheat, potato and corn inevitably became part of the

primitive daily menu. These foods became basic staples because they were easy to grow, kept

hunger at bay and were reasonably nutritious—but they were pretty bland by themselves. That is

when spices and herbs came into widespread and universal use.

The Mysterious World of Flavorings

The spices of life

Herbs, spices and other flavorings actually served two distinct purposes in the primitive diet:

to flavor and add variety to the staple foods, and to cover the off-flavored, sometimes even spoiled

taste of foods that were no longer fresh but had to be eaten because it was better than going hungry.

This was particularly true in warm climates where, without refrigeration, food spoiled quickly.

Warm-climate cuisines today still use the spiciest flavorings, a tradition that goes back to the

beginnings of the art of cookery.

Today in our modern high-tech world seasonings offer variety and flavoring to foods. While

we have managed to eliminate the need to hide off-flavors of stale food with spices, industrial and

restaurant kitchens have found another use for them. They use flavorings to boost flavor in

otherwise flavorless second and third-rate kitchen products. Some spices with preservative qualities

even add to the length of shelflife—so food processors like to use them liberally.

Whatever the reason, spices, herbs and flavorings play an important part in every kitchen,

even in those where the “cook” does little more than boil water, toasts bread and pops prepackaged

meals into the microwave. Food scientists today know over 1,000 natural flavoring substances,

though in our kitchens worldwide we only use about 100. Each specific cuisine has a mere small

handful of perhaps half a dozen, but rarely more than eight or ten, in common use. Only the most

sophisticated cook with international repertoire has spices and herbs by the scores.

But the absolute masters of flavorings are the Asian Indian cooks who regularly use the

largest numbers of spices and herbs. They combine them in infinite variations to obtain limitless

shades of flavorings and they consider colors as carefully as flavors. The combinations must be

pleasing not only to the palate but to the eyes. Indian cooks paint with their spices. Each Indian

region, even each village or household, has its own characteristic flavor combination, like

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