Endless Thread - Raiding the fridge with Condiment Claire

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

This week on Endless Thread, we're raiding our refrigerators and rating our favorite condiments with TikTok creator and author "Condiment Claire" Dinhut. We learn about the surprising history of some of our favorite flavor-enhancers, and Claire shares her secrets for using up the last bits of sauce in a jar and how she keeps her online presence appetizing. Show notes: The Condiment Book (Flatiron Books) Credits: This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. 

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for this podcast comes from Nature is the Solution, a podcast from the Nature Conservancy. This show tells climate stories like a stubborn optimist, because hope, innovation, and nature itself are key. to solving the challenges ahead. Follow on your favorite podcast app. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Hey, all, before the show starts, we just want to remind you that we set up secure lines for you to communicate with us.

If there's anything you need to share anonymously or very carefully in this time that we are living. Yeah, we have a proton mail account that is WBUR Secure Tips at Proton. or you can text or call us on Signal. That number is 646-456-9095. We should also mention that WBWR is an NPR member station

and that the CEO of NPR, Catherine Marr, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the messaging app. Anyway, if there's anything you need to be in touch with us about and you want to be careful with how you share that information, and protected. That's how you get in touch. WBUR Secure Tips at Proton.m.m. Or call us or text. Signal 646-456-9095. Butter or ketchup? I'm going to say butter. Butter. Okay. Stick in with you, Claire. Mustard or mayonnaise? Mustard. Okay, so we've got butter versus mustard. Who wins in that battle? That's so hard. I know. They're so different. But my favorite condiment of all time is Dijon mustard,

so I'm going to have to go mustard. Cookout season is officially here. Just wanted to give you a little sizzle. Thank you. I appreciate that. So we, Ben, you and I, recently hosted a very serious competition. The Battle of the Condiments. Playing along with us was Condiment Claire, a TikTok creator and author of The Condiment book, which features the Condiment Bracket Challenge.

She invites all of her readers to fill it out, and it is spicier than any sports-turney bracket you've ever seen. Turn into you, Ben. You ready? Pickles or kimchi? Well, kimchi is pickles, so I reject the question. You're not allowed to reject the question. Pickles are kimchi. I think pickles. What is like a condiment that you will refuse to not just make from scratch?

Like, I will not buy tartar sauce. Right. Because I have pickles. I have mayonnaise. I have lemon juice. I have capers. And I have salt. Yeah.

And you know the way you like it. And so you get to make it yourself and you know, it'll just suit your taste buds, right? Yes. I would say I would never buy a salad dressing only because, you know, each salad is different. But even if it's just a simple French vinaigrette, I know how to make that. I have shallots at home. I have good d'ijon mustard. I have fresh lemon.

and juice, you know, there are certain key elements that you can't really buy in anything store bought. I also think a Caesar dressing while, you know, I'll have a Caesar dressing and a Caesar salad at a restaurant quite often because I'm a big fan. But if I'm having it at home, I know the way I like it. I mean, very entropy heavy, let's be honest. Preach, Claire, preach. Claire has a million and counting followers on TikTok, where she posts about the water mill in France, where she lives part-time with her dad, the food she eats while traveling, and the culinary experiments she conducts in her home-based kitchen in London, usually having to do with condiments. Condiment Claire, of course, is not her government name. My name's Claire Deneut. I never thought I would be in the world of

condiments, but now condiments are my job, and I will take it any day. Well, today, condiments are our job, too. I'm Ben Tartar saucy boy Johnson. And we'll take it any day. I'm Amory, celery, salt, Siebertson, and you're listening to Endless Thread. Coming to you from WBUR, Boston's refrigerator door. We're digging into our refrigerators and talking to condiment, Claire, about why you should never rinse a jar, and about what happens when you mix a fascination with flavor and online fame. I'll tell you what happens. Things get delicious. Is there a difference between...

A condiment and a sauce. You know, a sauce is a kind of condiment. Because condiment actually comes from the Latin verb condier, which means to enhance the flavor of. So it's anything that's added that you don't really need. You know, so whether that's a sprinkle of salt on top of a beautiful sourdough loaf with butter, that sprinkle of salt then becomes a condiment. But if you're cooking with salt, then it's an ingredient.

You know, there are certain condiments that are ingredients and condiments, but it just depends on their use whether or not we can consider them a condiment. People have been using condiments to enhance flavor for millennia. In ancient Rome, they were crushing fish inards and fermenting them to make something called garum, which began as a fish sauce and eventually got used in the first iteration of ketchup. In China, around the 4th century, they were figuring out how to process soy into a delicious salty sauce. But Claire told us there's one condiment that historians believe predates ketchup, soy sauce, and anything else in your fridge right now. The chilies.

Back in the day, they actually weren't used primarily as condiments, but more so as weapons. So the Aztecs used chilies during war. Parents used chilies, you know, to kind of tame their children at home. Let's call it that. Wait a minute. As weapons like, you feed a chili to your child and it humbles them because they've been owned by the chili. No, so they would actually, they would hold their children above these fires filled with chilies if they were misbehaving and kind of burn their eyes. Eventually, people saw there was potential for a more palatable type of chili pepper pain.

Hot, spicy flavor. Which I'm so glad about because I would not have liked being a child placed above a hot smoking chili. Or maybe you would have because you have the sort of. you have the proclivity for chilies. Yeah, maybe you would have been that baby. They would have held you over the smoke and you would have just laughed and continued to create mischief. Amazing, love it.

Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Dad. Claire mostly grew up in California, but she spent a lot of time in Europe with her family. Her dad is from France, where condiments are a cultural keystone. Somewhere along the way, Claire was introduced to the idea that eating while traveling could be an occupation.

I grew up watching Anthony Bourdain. It was always my dream to be him. All throughout college, I emailed, emailed, ZPZ, which was the CNN subsidiary at the time that was working on parts unknown. And I was like, please hire me, please hire me. I'll do anything. You don't have to pay me.

I just really want to work on something like this. Wow. You know, to be able to travel the world and learn about different people through food is always what I wanted to do. So I emailed and finally, you know, they said, if you move to New York, you can work on this show. We'll figure something out.

It was like, great. I got an apartment in New York. I went on my graduation tour. Unfortunately, Anthony Bourdain passed away during that time. So I got to New York, and I was like, uh-oh. Oh, no. My idol's dead, and I have no job. What do I do? What Claire did was work for another production company. Eventually, she got a deal to host her own show.

The idea was that Claire would cook with grandmas in kitchens around the world. That's a nice idea. I'd watch that. It's beautiful. Yeah. But then the pandemic happened. Bad time to travel and an especially bad time to visit other people's grandmas. Claire was out of a job. So she did what a lot of people did during the pandemic. She downloaded TikTok. My username at the beginning was Claire from where because it was all about the fact that, yes, I sound like this, but I'm also half French and I've kind of lived all over and I just moved to London and I was in Prague. And let's just say people were confused. And so it was Claire from where. And when lockdown lifted...

W-H-E-R-E. Exactly. And so when lockdown lifted and I started getting recognized, people would call me out and say, hey, you're Condiment Claire. You're the Condiment Girl. Within that month, I changed my username to Condiment Claire. And I figured, this is kind of a gag. Let's roll with it.

Everything is fake. We're all still semi-in-lockdown. Nothing's real. So Claire kept cooking, really mixing, I guess, right? On TikTok. And the algorithm kept serving up her condoms. takes to people around the world. Hello, I have one radish left, so let's make a radibir together.

So here's some sardines and some tomato sauce, yum, yum, look at that schlootiness. It says not to cook or pour hot liquid onto the sea grape, so I guess this is like a cold-only snicky snack. Her most viewed video is about at-home butter churning. I have my first driving lesson in England in 30 minutes, and when I tell you, making butter is so easy, even if you're churning it yourself by hand, that I feel zero stress right now. Like many of her videos, it's filmed on her phone in her kitchen. Claire is vigorously turning the handle of a little device that fits into a mason jar.

You feel it under your hand, like once you really get used to it, it goes from getting hard to like uneven because it's like slosh. That butter churning video has 33 million views. Claire now posts on TikTok almost every day, sometimes more than once. So I say this with no actual shape. towards TikTok because I think TikTok is incredible in many ways. But as a person who grew up watching Anthony Bourdain and these really beautiful, highly produced TV shows about, you know, food and travel and culture, were you a little wary of TikTok of making that your medium? Completely. Completely. And I've never been a social media person, you know, even though I adore TikTok. And, you know,

I will never say a bad word about it because it gave me the opportunities that I have today. I think nowadays, even though I don't necessarily agree with it, you get opportunities based on following. And that to me is still very odd. But again, I can never bash it because that's, you know, the reason I have a book. So I'm so grateful for it. And so I started on TikTok for that, you know, to be able to use TikToks as a means to an end. And what I do like about TikTok as well is the fact that it is so. casual. You know, none of my videos are highly edited. Like, sure, I'll take some time editing and making sure the captions are correct and all that, but there is something so personal where you feel like you're FaceTiming a friend, where you feel like, because I'm trying

that, maybe you can try that. Or, you know, maybe if I'm going to this place and showing you this, like, random donut shop in Spain that's behind a monastery, you can also go there. Whereas I think when something is on TV and really beautiful and really edited, there's a certain almost glass wall in between where sometimes it doesn't feel accessible. The beauty of TikTok is that there is that community aspect there. I really do recognize, you know, the names in my comments. I think it's an amazing place for that. I love that people can watch from all over the world. You have that real-time feedback. You're able to communicate with people. So the community aspect is really nice on TikTok as well. How would you describe the Condiment Claire community?

What kinds of things are people saying in the comments? Do people kind of Yeah. What's the sense of the community? You know, it's so, it's really so lovely. Everyone's so curious. I think I'm very lucky that people are from all over the world. So I don't have, you know, 80% U.S. following or 100% U.K. following. People are really from all over. And because of that, you'll have people in the comments be like, okay, in my culture, we eat it like this. Or in my culture, we have tomatoes in June versus August, et cetera, et cetera. And so people have conversations. in the comments based on where they're from, which I just think is so lovely. And the fact that, you know, I can make a video about mayo and someone from Chile can say, hey, we, we use a ton of mayo in our sandwiches. And someone from Belgium can be like, okay, well, we put mayo on our fries. And there's that back and forth conversation. And I also get to learn so much from it. So I would say curiosity and just the fact that everyone is international just makes it really, really interesting. Another thing about social media and anyone who could be seen as an influencer, even if your influence is condiment themed, there is this kind of hunger from the following to get to know you, to feel like they know you, to know more about your personal life and how, in your case, all of these condiments fit into your personal life and preferences.

and that's not so much a feature of your channel. You do show people like, this is my family's farm in France, but we don't know that much about you per se just from the channel. Can you talk about why that is? Yeah, you know, I think, again, I never thought I'd be on social media. I do really respect my own privacy and also my loved ones' privacies. If I'm eating dinner with my friends, you know, I'm never going to pull my phone out. and just be like, hold on, let me film a TikTok. And I think that gives me a really nice

work life balance now that this is my work. And I do feel like I don't need to share everything with the internet. You know, I'm never going to film a video being like, oh, here's my boyfriend, or I'm going for a breakup, or, oh, I'm having a really sad day. Or, you know, I just think that it's really important to do that. And even though people do feel like they know me, I think they do know my flavor preferences, which, again, I think it's a super personal thing as well. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it really is a personal thing to be able to talk to someone about flavor and what they like, because again, it's really based on how you grew up, your culture, what you eat every single day, and that does give you an inside look.

Coming up, we give Claire an inside look at our refrigerators after a snack break. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into us. other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex.

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of the insides of our refrigerators. I love it. And I'm, eager and terrified to find out what you thought about those. Maybe we'll start with Ben's fridge. Both fridges, great in the sense that everyone has their own taste buds, you do you. And so I think to judge anyone for the plate in front of them or what's in their fridge is just not a nice thing to do. Oh, come on, I'm begging for the judgment clear. Very diplomatic. Ben's, Ben's looks a lot like mine in the sense that there are lots of condiments. There are lots of Asian-y condiments as well.

and that's a flavor profile that I love. So even that black vinegar at the end, I was like, okay, yep, this is a bit of me. Game respect, game. There you go, tartar saucy boy. Yes. You can bring on the judgment to my refrigerator then. No, no. See, this is why Claire's big tent.

She's big tent condiments. And I respect that. Yeah, there you go. Well, was there something missing from either of our refrigerators or maybe not? Not missing, but based on what you saw in our refrigerators, you were thinking like, oh, I bet they'd like this. Or they need a, something like this would go with that. You know, I would say the one thing missing were condiments in the works. In the sense, you know, you didn't have fruit getting ready to be jammed or you didn't have any chilies fermenting, ready to be hot sauce.

And I think as long as there's always, you know, something about to be made, then you're keeping it interesting. I know my fridge, I'm always going to open it. And granted, this is my job now, which I'm so grateful for. But there's always going to be, you know, whether it's a miso in the works in my pantry or, you know, strawberries macerating so that I can make jam the next morning or pickles or something fermenting. That's, it's always fun. There always needs to be at least one experiment going in my fridge. You have something on your TikTok called the Never Rinse a Jar series. Can you describe what this is?

Yes. So in my household, I refuse to ever rinse a jar, which means, you know, if there's a jar of jam and there's only one little doll up at the bottom and you can't scrape the edges, you're not going to rinse that jar out. If you have a squirty ketchup bottle, you're not going to rinse the squirty ketchup bottle out before you recycle it. You're always going to use that last little bit of condiment up. And what that does is, well, one, I just refuse to waste food ever. So even, you know, rinsing that away makes me feel extremely guilty because it's just my own self-conscious, but it also allows you to play with flavor because it forces you to try and match that condiment with something that could work. What's a creation that you sort of stumbled upon that you're like, oh yeah, I'm going to like purposefully make this now? Oh, I look forward to finishing jars just so I can do new things. One that I really loved is there was this kind of pickled, fermented mushroom sauce situation that was quite peppery and has. And had like Worcestershire sauce at the bottom. And I finished that. And I was like, hmm, what am I going to do with that? And that day, I knew I wanted to have friends over and I was going to make kind of a

Greek spread. So I knew I wanted to make some hummus and satsiki, all that. And I figured, why wouldn't I just make the hummus in that same jar? So I made the hummus. And then instead of putting it in a new Tupperware or a new glass jar, I put it directly in there. So I think just the idea that you can put leftovers in jars that are basically finished, that's one of my favorite ways to use them up because instead of having to, you know, use a mini spatula and put that little bit of condiment left on whatever you have, you can just put it directly in the jar. So this kind of mushroomy hummus was not something I was planning on doing, but it worked really well. Along with pictures of the insides of our refrigerators, we also each sent you a particular condiment that is in our fridge,

is almost empty. And we look to you for guidance on how to not rinse that jar. but to repurpose the dregs of that particular condiment into some new condiment. Of course. Can you walk us through that? You can start with, I don't actually know what Ben sent you, I don't think. Well, we can start with yours, which was chili oil, right? Chili Crisp, yep. Chili crisp.

Okay, I mean, I think the easiest way to use up anything that has, you know, oil or a bit of fat in it is to make eggs because you just put it directly in the pan and then you don't need to butter your pan or oil your pan, anything like that. So I would say plop a few eggs in that chili crisp, shake it up, and then put it directly into your hot pan, and then you can make scrambled eggs super easily. And then you have all that flavor that you wanted in the first place. Then you get the chili crisp, like nice and to toasty too, just by heating it up. So really like that. Another way I like to use chili crisp is by making, oh, you're vegan. I forgot about that. I would say. I have just, have you ever, have you heard of just egg? Yes. Okay. So as long as you're, you're, you're, you're, you're

open to that? I am, yeah. Just Egg is really good, and that's made out of mung beans. We are not sponsored by Just Egg, but hey, Just Egg, if you want to sponsor us. I love what you're doing. I could pour some of that, like, liquid mung bean scrambled egg replacement into the jar. And I feel like I put Chili Crisp on that already, but I wouldn't have thought to, like, pour it in, shake it up, and then scramble. Yeah. And another thing you can do, you know, I think with Chili Crisp, what's really fun is making a quote unquote salad within it. So whether it's tin fish or like cold, cold roast chicken. And in your case, you can do lentil, chickpeas.

And then you just mash it up directly in there instead of having to dirty another bowl. Because that is always a really nice element in any cold salad, you know, potato salad. Otherwise, you know, I, there's actually this soy yogurt that I like to use. And I'm not vegan, but there's this one soy yogurt in the UK that is really nice. It has a good texture. It's nice and savory. And that, if I'm making, you know, a dip for certain things, if I'm having friends over, in a crudita platter, I'll put the yogurt directly into a jar.

So, for example, this would work with a chili crisp. And then you'd get this, like, slightly spiced yogurt dip. That's a great idea. What did you send her, Ben? I sent her a long video of different condiments. And I think the, I mean, I think that the black vinegar is probably the one it has, like, And I don't need, I'm embarrassed to say this because it's in my fridge, but that's been around for so long at this point that it's like it's hardened. Like that's not even really liquid down there if that makes any sense.

I, no, you know what? It does, there are deposits at the bottom of my black vinegar too and I use it. I think it's just the nature of black vinegar. Heck yeah. All right. What do I do? Okay. So the thing with black vinegar is if you're listening to this and you've never seen what the bottle looks like.

It's a big glass bottle, so it's tall. You can't really, it's not like a jar that's easy to put things in. No, chopstick is your best bet, and even that, it's pretty tall. Exactly. Yeah. And sometimes the shape of the bottle can determine what you do with the condiment. So, again, it makes it more fun. Just think of this all as a game and how you're going to get maximal flavor out of what you have,

what you're working with. So I would say for that, the easiest thing to do is make a salad dressing or makes a sauce, for example, because you can pour in different liquids to the black vinegar because the spout's small enough for that. Just shake it all up, and then it becomes part of the sauce. So I love putting black vinegar on silken tofu. So a really easy weekday, night meal, you know, you'll have a block of tofu, and then you can make this black vinegar sauce super easily in that bottle.

Nice. Just pour it on top, and then you're good to go. All right, in, done. Great. All right. I'll let you know how it tastes. Please report back. I know that this whole focus on condiments started, maybe not by accident, but that it wasn't exactly what you were imagining.

And yet it seems clearly you have a lot of people following you and wanting to learn more about condiments. What do you hope is the impact that you can have in the food world on TikTok and beyond? Yeah, I think, you know, as long as people are experimenting in their kitchens and they're no longer scared to try new things, whether it's new combinations or new flavors from different cultures, I think that's my main goal. You know, people are very afraid in their kitchens. And I'm not a chef. I'm the first person to say that I'm not a chef.

You know, a lot of my friends are classically trained or worked in kitchens. I have not. But I do know how to create flavor. And, you know, that flavor may not be for everyone. but it's what works for me. So I think just learning about your own taste buds is something that's really special. So if I can, you know, inspire people,

just learn more about their own taste buds. That's all I can really hope for. I want to know what condiments that our listeners love. Ooh. Like I was in New Orleans. I had a remelad on some crab cakes that I will never forget. You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah. I had like a hoagie spread in Philly. that I will never forget. So, like, I feel like there's, like, a real sort of regionality to condiments, you know? And I'm curious what our listeners either make, that would be awesome, or they buy. That's not just, like, you go to the store, you buy your greatoupon. Like, what's the weird, what's the thing that, like, you can only get in that one grocery store chain in your zone? You know what I'm saying?

That, like, I need to know about it. Please, listeners, please tell me because I, my fridge, it does not runeth over with condiments as much as I would like it to. This is very Ohio of me, I guess, but I didn't know that that was how you pronounced gray poop. Poupon? Haven't you ever seen the gray Poupon commercials? I've seen the gray poopin. Poupon? You haven't seen the gray Poupon commercials?

Emery, have you been pronouncing it gray poop on this whole time? I've never said that out loud in my life. I have no idea what it is. Yeah, tell us about your poop-pon in all their shades. Jesus Christ. And how you prepare your poo-pon. Oh, no. And we won't poo-poo it.

Oh, God. Amory had to be the one to take a thing. about food and just insert poop into it somehow. This episode was produced by Grace Poupon Tatter. It was co-hosted by me, Ben Tartor Sassy Boy Johnson. And me, Emery Slatter It On Severson. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mixed in sound design by our production manager, Paul Vikis. It was edited by Meg Kramer. The rest of our team is Frannie Monaghan, Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, and our managing producer, Samata Joshi. Endless thread is a show about the blurred lines between a bottle of tomato ketchup and a bottle of fish intestines. Woo-hoo! If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery, a wild story, a recipe for the best condiment. A poupon for the people. A poupon for the people. Or anything from the

internet that you want us to explore. You can hit us up. Endless thread at wb u.b.org.