Condiments

Taylor Swift watched the Kansas City Chiefs play at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday. At one point she ate a snack and unknowingly set a meme in motion.

Arts

The journey of 'seemingly ranch,' from meme to top of the Empire State Building

2:15pm September 28, 2023

by Rachel Treisman

Heinz and Primal Kitchen are selling limited-edition bottles of "Seemingly Ranch" dressing. The Empire State Building lit up in red and white. It all started, as so many trends do, with Taylor Swift.

Japanese steakhouses often serve a creamy orange-pink sauce alongside a steaming meal. The popularity and intrigue around the sauce led one teppanyaki restaurant owner, Terry Ho, to start bottling it in bulk under the name Yum Yum Sauce.

Yum Yum Sauce: The Making Of An American Condiment

6:02pm July 29, 2019

by Oliver Whang

Japanese steakhouses often serve a creamy orange-pink sauce alongside a steaming meal. Online, fans obsess over hacking the recipe for this "Japanese classic," but its roots are firmly American.

In Mexico, chamoy comes in many forms, including sauce, seasoning powder, shaved ice and candy. A chamoy apple was all the author needed to get hooked.

World News

Chamoy Is Mexico's Flavor Fiesta Condiment, Courtesy Of China

1:59pm January 17, 2017

by Leena Trivedi-Grenier

Fruity, sweet, spicy and salty all at once, this frenzied treat for your taste buds takes many forms — from sauces to seasonings to candy. And its journey from Asia to Mexico took hundreds of years.

A cabbage butterfly caterpillar. For tens of millions of years, these critters have been in an evolutionary arms race with plants they munch on. The end result: "mustard oil bombs" that also explode with flavor when we humans harness them to make condimen

Science

Why You Should Thank A Caterpillar For Your Mustard And Wasabi

4:16pm June 29, 2015

by Jessie Rack

Eons ago, cabbage butterfly larvae and the plants they eat began an evolutionary arms race. The result: "mustard oil bombs" that give the plants, and condiments we make from them, distinctive flavors.

Ava Gene's, a Roman-inspired restaurant in Portland, Ore., incorporates colatura, a modern descendant of ancient Roman fish sauce, into several of its dishes.

Fish Sauce: An Ancient Roman Condiment Rises Again

11:19am October 26, 2013

by Deena Prichep

We usually associate fish sauce with Southeast Asian cooking. But it turns out the briny condiment also has deep roots in Europe, dating back to the Roman Empire. What caused its decline? Historians say it boils down to taxes, and pirates.

Queue Listen Now