Spices never masked rotten meat, and condiments once meant pickles
A favourite food myth says people piled on pungent spices and sauces to hide spoiled meat before refrigeration. No historical record backs it up. The word condiment itself tells a different story: it comes from a Latin verb for preserving and pickling, and first described preserved foods rather than sauces.
Latin condimentum meant spice, seasoning or sauce, and the related verb condire meant to preserve, pickle or season. Over time the meaning drifted toward anything added to food for flavour. Definitions still disagree. Some treat condiment as a synonym for seasoning and include salt and pepper; others limit it to prepared mixtures containing spices, added after cooking, such as mustard or mint sauce. The Culinary Institute of America calls it an aromatic mixture that accompanies food, citing chutney and pickles.
Rome ran on one in particular. Cooks made garum and the closely related liquamen by crushing fish innards and fermenting them in salt, yielding a liquid rich in glutamic acid that deepened the taste of a dish. Demand was high enough to support a thriving condiment trade, and the late Roman cookbook known as Apicius gives condiments a section of their own. Ancient India, Greece and China had their own traditions too.
Timing distinguishes the types. Soy sauce, teriyaki, Marmite and the West African seasonings iru and ogiri go in during cooking; mayonnaise goes into a sandwich before serving; ketchup and table sauces are added by the diner, often from single-serve packets with takeaway food. Asian restaurant tables commonly carry soy sauce, vinegar, chilli oil and the spice blend shichimi.
Condiments can also carry nutrients. Studies across nine Asian countries found diets often short of iodine and iron, and fortified products help: iodised salt can lift iodine intake by 9 to 80 percent of the nutrient reference value, and bouillon cubes can raise iron intake by 3 to 40 percent.
Source: Condiment
