Consider the pickle. Dill, of course, kosher if possible. Extra zestiness and garlic, stackability, all a matter of taste. Crunch a necessity.

The pickle is an enigma. Made from the mild-mannered cucumber, albeit in its puckishly small incarnations, it is still considered a vegetable. And yet it has undergone a change — a sea change, one might say, given the saline nature of the brine in which its delicious flesh is steeped — and moved from the salad bar to the condiment table, the crisper drawer to the refrigerator door, from the domain of “Mom, do I HAVE to?” to the delectable snackings of all right-minded youngsters. The pickle is, in essence, a vehicle for taste. And while such assertions could be made of many an edible item, for the pickle it is vigorously true, since the pickle itself is in origin separate from the taste which eventually possesses it like the ghost of a vengeful ancestor. What joy! The marriage of toothsome spices with the crisp meat of the ground-growing plant. The restoration of pungent flavor to that unfortunate cousin of the colorful melon family that long lay bland and white of flesh! The transformative power of time made manifest in the person of a pickle!