You’ve just poached yourself an egg and put it on a little toasty slice of deliciousness. What do you do next? Reach for the salt? Correct. A grind of black pepper, perhaps? Oh no. No no no. You’ve just ruined the perfect egg! Straight to jail.

In many dining rooms and restaurants around the country, you’ll find salt and pepper grinders side by side like they deserve an equal spot at the literal table. Almost as if they have an equally important job to do. They do not.

Salt is amazing; it’s a flavour enhancer. Salt makes things taste better, bringing out more of their natural flavour. Our bodies literally need salt to function. It deserves its place at the table.

Pepper doesn’t! Knock it right off the tablecloth! Pepper is not a flavour enhancer. It actively makes things taste worse. Here’s a delicious egg, do you want it to taste like bitter burning? And do you want to sneeze intensely multiple times in a row? SURE! Grind some black pepper on it.

Let’s think about it. Pepper is a spice. If you think about the spices you use commonly, I’m tipping black pepper doesn’t even register. Cumin, paprika, cinnamon… I use all of them daily. Hell, even coriander seeds get a good run! I only use black pepper when a recipe specifically tells me to and even then I’ll do a tiny courtesy grind – the smallest wrist motion ever displayed.

So, why does pepper get a seat at the table? How did it even get there? Why do we think black pepper is an essential taste needed in every meal?

Turns out, it was a status symbol. To focus on the angel-child salt for a second, historically salt was super-valuable. Roman soldiers were paid in salt, hence the term “salary”. Pepper was a favourite ingredient among the Roman Empire for similar reasons and was referred to by merchants as “black gold”. It is used in every recipe in Apicius’s third-century cookbook De re coquinaria.

But why – literal centuries later – is it still there on the table at my local café? Far from being a sign of wealth, I feel, a pepper grinder on your table these days signifies you also use Comic Sans as your menu font and serve lattes in glasses with twisted wire handles (there might also be a balsamic glaze zig-zagging across every white square plate). It’s a signifier that your chef doesn’t season their food well enough and that you’re stuck in the ’90s café-culture wise, or early 2000s at best.

And yes, my gripe is squarely with European-influenced restaurants or cafés. I’m all for the pot of mouth-numbing chilli oil on every table at Chinese restaurants or the bottle of soy sauce or various forms of furikake for sprinkling at Japanese diners. They are delicious! Black pepper just isn’t.

I tried to think of a dish that has black pepper in it that I like. Salt and pepper squid? That’s white pepper! And it’s delicious. This lemon cake I had with roasted peppercorns on top at a fancy bar once? They were pink peppercorns. Also delicious. I know what you’re thinking: BUT WHAT ABOUT CACIO E PEPE?! OK, you got me there. It’s a pretty great form of pasta, especially when it’s served straight into your bowl after being whizzed around a giant pecorino cheese wheel. Some dishes are allowed to have black pepper. But I just don’t think it deserves the box seat at every table! Plus, I definitely disagree with people adding it to their meals without even tasting them first.

Taste-wise, it’s literally a chemical irritant. This is thanks to the piperine in it. Piperine is what gives black pepper the bitter burning feeling. But it turns out, as omnivores we’re hardwired to seek out foods that are slightly irritating (chilli is also included in this boat) so that as a species we can go out and find new foods rather than just stay eating the same thing. This is important because if the climate changes, then we as a species die. But I’m sorry fellow humans, the continued existence and wellbeing of the entire human race is still not enough for me to grind black pepper onto my eggs.

This rant was featured in frankie issue 122. To get your mitts on a copy, swing past the frankie shop, subscribe or visit one of our lovely stockists.