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In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, recipes for making soy sauce at home appeared in English and American cookbooks. Since soybeans were not widely available, these recipes used local ingredients such as mushrooms, walnuts, and fish...

Tomato was another popular ingredient for making American "soy" sauce... The names for these varying sauces were "ketchups," or "catch-ups," or "catsups," derived from the Indonesian word for soy sauce: ketjap.

— Eight Flavors by Sarah Lohman (Page 124)

The first soy sauce manufactured in the Western world was produced in 1767 in Thunderbolt, Georgia, near Savannah, long before the first Chinese and Japanese immigrants arrived.

— Eight Flavors by Sarah Lohman (Page 123)

When black pepper was first being consumed in large quantities in the early nineteenth century, it was considered hot, due to its piperine content. Chili peppers contain a structurally similar chemical called capsaicin -- both are considered chemical irritants.

Capsaicin bons to nerve cells in our mouth and nose; specifically to receptors called TRPV1. This receptor is designed to warn us about dangerous sensations such as acid, abrasions, and heat. Capsaicin triggers a "hot" response, which is why we feel warm when we eat it: our body interprets capsaicin as thermally warm, hence the use of the word heat when we refer to this particular type of spice.

— Eight Flavors by Sarah Lohman (Page 57)

Although cakes and cookies bake at the same temperature, about 350 degrees, cakes reach internal temperatures of only around 210 degrees. But cookies, which are small and thin, will exceed temperatures of 280 to 300 degrees. At high heats, all the hundreds of wonderful flavor chemicals of natural vanilla burn off. The result is that your vanilla sugar cookies, baked with natural vanilla extract, end up virtually tasteless. But imitation vanilla, which contains pure vanillin, delivers a much more potent dose of flavor that survives the oven's heat.

— Eight Flavors by Sarah Lohman (Page 48)