Aaron, my boyfriend, loves going to Thai restaurants and surprising the wait staff on his preferred level of spiciness. When they present the range of heat, Aaron will usually go for the upper echelons. One being mild and five being hot? He'll go for five. And sometimes the waiter or waitress will smile at us, eyebrows raised as if he's maybe forgotten how numbers work and I'm just cruel enough not to correct him.
"You...like spicy?" they ask.
Aaron usually orders first, so when it comes time for me, I can make my choice without feeling like I should be second guessing my decision. Although I typically don't go full-throttle. My good friend Jason and I both love spicy food, but more often than not I tend to settle on the upper edge of medium-hot. I've had plenty of dishes where after a few bites, my water glass isn't one-quarter of the way full, but oh my god it's three-quarters of the way gone, and my nose is threatening to run like it would when I was a teenager, mowing my grandma's lawn in the middle of allergy season.
Today I read a brief interview with Paul Rozin, a cultural psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who's studied the way that people throughout the world learn to love the flavors of things they hate. Like chilis, for example. Or beer. Or ginger. A lot of the things that I really like.
His research looks at the way people adapt to culinary elements through exposure and repetition. Take chilis, how in Mexican culture they're used on practically everything. According to him, people can learn to enjoy flavors (and even experiences) they originally hate.
When I was growing up, my family didn’t eat a lot of spicy foods. My parents drank coffee, but I didn’t until well into my teens. And we certainly didn’t drink booze together.
So, I have to wonder, why did I go through a phase in which I put cayenne pepper in my scrambled eggs? Why did I push myself past the point of only liking the smell of coffee to drinking the stuff every single day? And how is it that I can find myself prickling with anticipation at the thought of ordering a Negroni before dinner despite knowing full well there’ll be that bitter bite from the Campari?
I can’t claim to have any answers, but it’s an interesting thing to think about.