Eight Ingredients Across Five Thousand Years: From Watermelon Seeds to XO Sauce

The atlas dates the earliest use of the watermelon seed to about 3500 BC, from wild watermelon seeds found at Uan Muhuggiag, a prehistoric site in Libya. The seeds are usually discarded with fresh fruit but are roasted as a snack in China, and in West Africa and the Middle East they are ground into flour or pressed for a light cooking oil.

Lupin seeds have been found in Twelfth Dynasty tombs in Egypt dated to the twenty-second century BC, and pre-Inca Peruvians domesticated the Andean species around the sixth or seventh century BC. Bitter varieties hold high levels of alkaloids and need long soaking in salt water, which is why lupin is traditionally eaten as a pickled snack.

The atlas records safflower being grown as a crop in Egypt as early as 2000 BC, citing CooksInfo, though the oil itself has been a major product for only about the last fifty years. Two types exist: a high-oleic oil with lower saturated fat than olive oil, and a high-linoleic oil once used as a paint medium.

The Horseradish Information Council states that the Egyptians knew horseradish as far back as 1500 BC. The intact root has little aroma, but cutting or grating it releases allyl isothiocyanate, which irritates the sinuses, and the pungency fades and turns bitter once the grated root meets air or heat.

Wasabi is a relative of horseradish and mustard, native to Japan, and its earliest documented use dates to the eighth century. CooksInfo records cultivation on Honshu since at least 1000 AD. Its flavor stimulates the nose more than the tongue, and many markets outside Japan substitute dyed western horseradish for the real rhizome.

The earliest documented sofrito recipe, from around the fourteenth century, called for nothing more than onion and oil. The name comes from the Spanish verb sofreir, to stir-fry, and the preparation is cooked slowly in oil as a base, with versions from Spain and Portugal, the Italian soffritto of onion, carrot and celery, and Puerto Rican and Cuban Caribbean styles.

The French ambassador Simon de la Loubere first described nam phrik to Western readers in 1687 to 1688. It is a Thai chili sauce or dip of chilies, garlic, shallots and lime juice, often with fish or shrimp paste, pounded in a mortar, and the food writer David Thompson called it and its relatives the very core of Thai cooking.

XO sauce was developed in Hong Kong in the 1980s, most often credited to Spring Moon, the restaurant of the Peninsula Hong Kong hotel. Dried scallops, red chili peppers, Jinhua ham, dried shrimp and garlic cooked in oil give it a chunky, relish-like texture, and its name borrows the prestige of extra-old cognac although the sauce contains none.