Ponder Place

Chicken seasoning.

I suppose this one is more of an anomaly of my assumptions. Up until a few days ago, which is when I made this discovery. I always assumed that chicken tastes like chicken.

I don’t think I’m as logical as I always thought I was.

Here is why.

Chicken is an animal. One that is eaten regularly. I’m a pretty big fan of chicken. I think it’s a great addition to any dinner. However all these years what I’ve been eating chicken…how to say it.

Okay this isn’t going to make sense until I tell you what happened last night.

Anticipating my hunger, I began work on dinner just after arriving home from work. The day before, I had stopped by Fry’s (our friendly neighborhood grocer) and picked up the goods. I was using a crock pot to cook potatoes, chicken breast’, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, and some little yellow things, they may have been the ugly stepchild of squash.

Who decided what chicken tastes like?

That’s my question. Yes yes, I know. The logical answer is “well chickens of course”. But that’s not true. I say this, knowing this previous statement is false. But I do not yet know the answer.

Time to get historic.

Somewhere down the family line of humanity. Someone has worked up the taste that society has accepted as chicken. I don’t know that this is the work of one man (or woman for you sexist out there) in particular. More than that. I think it is the result of a culmination of events. Which involved someone long ago preparing chicken. Which tasted pretty bland. So they put salt on it. This worked out for a while, but they wanted to spice it up a bit. So they threw on a bit of that, and a bit of this.

Now naturally this is a family. So one of the kids is raised with these items being added to the chicken. Years pass and this child is no longer a child, but is an adult with kids of his/her own. But this person does not recall exactly what was added to the chicken. Over time with each generation the ingredients change slightly.

This happens until, and I’m guessing, but about 1917. Which is almost a random guess, but it’s within the era that I speculate marketing first reached printed form.

As marketing began to take hold, the taste of chicken solidified on the latest variant of that first great ancestor.

I think the message I’m trying to get across, is that chickens are a bland tasting creature. And that makes sense when you think about it. As far as I’m aware, there does not exist an animal which can be cooked and come out naturally spicy and tasty. It’s all in the herbs.

In the end, it’s just the misguiding labeling that bothers me. I’ve just not really thought of it until now.