I’ve seen and been served these sort of abominations in Japan:
Usually from Trappey’s. Hard to find any place there isn’t a sizable contingent of Southerners. The peppers from the jar are also good on salads and in bean dishes.
I think that it’s very hard to measure the relative spiciness of food in the U.S. and the U.K. In both countries, the average spiciness of typical food has increased considerably over the past forty or forty-five years. The foods in each country which typify spiciness are so different that it’s difficult to compare them. Incidentally, salsa passed ketchup as the most common condiment in American supermarkets years ago. Another problem in comparing the U.S. and the U.K. is that people tend to pick certain small groups of Americans as the “real” Americans and assuming that they obviously are representative of most Americans and of their tastes. While it may be true that there are some small-town WASP Midwesterners who seldom eat spicy foods, there aren’t that many of them in comparison to, say, the number of Hispanics. Just compare the number of Hispanics in the U.S. with the number of South Asians in the U.K. There are about three times the percentage of Hispanics in the U.S. (10-12 percent) as there are South Asians in the U.K. (3-4 percent).
Butter on bread is fine. If it’s very thinly spread. I’m not a big fan of overly being able to taste the butter. I can even be persuaded to put butter on fruit bread, as long as it’s warm enough the butter melts. It’s the mixing the taste of butter with other toppings that gets me.
In Cameroon, there are three essential table condiments. One is Maggi sauce. Maggi sauce, and it’s beloved cousin the Maggi (bullion) cube have pretty much become the foundation of traditional Cameroonian cuisine. Even in the tiny “lady on a blanket” market by my house, which caters to families too poor to afford more than a tiny pinch of salt at a time, sells Maggi cube- sometimes ground up and divided for those who can’t pay for a whole one. Maggi cube is just that important. If you can’t afford anything at all, you still can’t scrimp on Maggi.
Often cheaper restaurants will water down their Maggi sauce, or make fake Maggi sauce by grinding up Maggi cube (or it’s cheap Nigerian imitators) and mixing it with water.
The other condiment is piment (or pepe or ceta, depending on who you are talking to.) This comes in two interchangeable varieties- powdered or sauce. This unholy hot concoction is made from scotch bonnet peppers mixed with a little bit of maggi cube and salt. The sauce form is mixed with generous dollops of palm oil, garlic and maybe a touch of tomato sauce. It’s so hot that a tiny button sized portion can render a dish barely edible. It’s great for disguising the taste of slightly bad meat, offal or various insects that you may be served. Piment comes with everything- your breakfast beans, stewed greens, meat, boiled eggs, etc.
Then comes mayo. Cameroon loves mayo. Omelettes, a popular street snack, come with a big dollop of it. Baguette with mayo is a common treat. On a lucky day, your hard boiled egg (purchased off a crate carried on a child’s head) will come with mayo. It turns out that mayo can sit in the sun without a fridge around for miles and not kill you. Who knew!
In South West China, you will get quite a few condiments with a meal. This often includes a spice dish holding salt, crushed red pepper, and MSG (mmmm!). You probably will also get a cup of hot pepper sauce and a small pitcher of vinegar (which cuts the heat of the incredibly spicy local cuisine.)
So far no one has mentioned garum, a fermented fish sauce which was considered a universal condiment in Ancient Rome and Greece:
Interesting article for you from the BBC:
Where I come from (Warwickshire in the Midlands), curry sauce, a sort of generic brown/green spicy sauce, is extremely popular in fish and chip shops. I used to work in one around 1989 and we sold far more of that than the traditional mushy peas.
Apparently there was a comedy show on TV called “Curry and Chips” in 1969, so it was probably already well established by then:
A picture from the interwebs:
From what I understand, it was basically Worcestershire sauce.
I’d assume someone had slipped them balsamic vinegar.
Which I’ve seen on the table in some posh restaurants here in the UK. Doesn’t work as well on chips though.
Amba is not a ubiquitous condiment here (and I share your disdain for it…)
Known as “Arissa” here in Israel – roughly the same status as Amba (i.e., you’ll rarely find in on the table, more likely on the condiment stand of a falafel or shwarma joint), but with the difference that it’s actually edible 
Another hot condiment used here is “Zhuk” – which may really just be a slightly different version of Arissa.
But the major ones are Humus (which replaces butter or mayo as the spread of choice in sandwiches) and Tehina (which will often be used in lieu of ketchup or salad dressing.) And of course, like in the rest of the Mediterranean region, olive oil gets quite a lot of use, too.
See post #38
Well, yes. The bright yellow, prepared “French’s Mustard” type, sweet dressing/dipping sauce is pretty uniquely American (sometimes even made with Mayo). And then no, actual stoneground “condiment” Mustard sweetened with honey is a pretty ancient recipe in Germany and other parts of Europe. The standard “mustard” recipe was collecting mustard seeds and then grinding them and mixing it with, wine/beer, vinegar, and sometimes honey or other sweeteners or flavorings in varying quantities to cut the bite or make it outright sweet.
Bavaria is pretty well known, as the home of Honey Mustard since 1854 for its sweet, stonegtound, coarse, mustard that one eats traditionally with weisswurst. I’ll bet der Adolf even used it.
From the outside in, I think a lot of foreigners, outside of Brits, might be pretty impressed, or slightly baffled, or even confused, at the most righteously awesomearray of condiments on every Wafflehouse counter/tableneatly arranged in a stainless wire caddy special made for the purpose.
Lessee, there’s Lea Perrin’s Steak Sauce, Lea Perrin’s Worcestershire, Heinz Ketchup, Heinz 57 sauce, Tabasco, Yellow Mustard, and Waffle House’s housebrand salsa (which is pretty good with the hashbrowns). I’m trying to think if I forgot any… think that covers it.
Not exactly. Garum is more like nam pla or similar SE-Asian fish sauces - mostly fish and salt, and it’s clear amber. “Wooster” is more “saucified” than that - it has sugar, colourings, vinegar, onions, and it’s dark and cloudy. Good stuff, but when I’m cooking Roman, it’s nam pla I use as a substitute (I should get round to making my own garum one of these days)
One of the advantages of living in a mixed culture, like I did, is that we had quite a spread of condiments at home - my mom favoured tomato sauce (All Gold, there’s no other ketchup like it), my dad loved mango achar, my siblings favoured chutney (Mrs Balls Fruit Chutney, not like Indian restaurant chutneys at all), we always had Colmans Hot English and Lee&Perrin’s Worcestershire, 1000 Islands dressing and malt vinegar around. Melted butter and apricot jam for a fish braai.
Now that I’ve grown up, I’ve added soy, nam pla, dukkah and EVOO-and-balsamic to that basic kit. More if I’m cooking ethnic, like plum and sweet chili for Chinese, satay for Thai, harissa for North African and steak sauce for BBQ.
If I’m eating out, I expect at least oil-and-balsamic if there’s bread on the table. I ask for it if there isn’t.
I think my condiment fridge space is larger than my grocery one.
But that’s for salad and some green vegetables, you’re not supposed to put it on other things - much less dunk your bread in it like I’ve seen Americans do in all seriousness, in Italian restaurants in the US. I’ve had American coworkers who were surprised that olive oil provided in restaurants in Spain or Italy was not in a small vessel into which they could dunk it.
I suppose it was, but this brand was very sweet and cinnamon-y, and not very curry like. But that had to be it as I had fries on my plate (alongside some sort of shnitzel).
I recall the ketchup in France weirding me out as well - I am just used to the more vinegary style. My friend recalls going into a McDonalds in Australia and nabbing some ketchup packets to take with her, because she found out they were carrying the US style whereas the local places had the sweeter version.
A number of US entrepreneurs have tried to add some variety to ketchup, but these efforts have largely failed. Americans appear to want their ketchup to be the same, everywhere & all the time. Which means Heinz or Heinz-like, it seems.
the Ketchup conundrum: More than you’ll want to know about trying to market specialty ketchups.
Love it.
I was just about to post on the Italian equivalent. Sometimes I like buttered bread, but most often I have Italian bread dipped in olive oil, usually with herbs (or za‘tar). For breakfast.
Mediterranean food! THE BEST IN THE WORLD!
My favorite type of mustard is Sweet-Hot. Is that German or American? Also, how common is Sweet-Hot mustard in delis and sandwich shops outside of the Western U.S.?
There’s sweet mustard and hit mustard, and combinations thereof, if that’s what you mean.