When did oil become a cult substance? I mean, when did we suddenly need a gazillion oils in order to cook anything?

I checked my kitchen this morning to see if I had a certain oil a recipe I want to try called for. Nope, no rapeseed oil. I found three kinds of olive oil, walnut oil, canola oil, grapeseed oil, sesame oil (both fragrant and not), corn oil. What shocked me was that I use all of these for different dishes. Grapeseed and walnut are perfect for two different home-made salad dressings. Fragrant sesame for stir fry.

When I was a kid, my grandmother, who did most of the cooking for a single working mom and a kid (me), had at most two kinds of oil. Wesson was the oil of choice for frying anything. Crisco was for baking, especially for rubbing about a cake tin to keep the batter from sticking. She’d save bacon drippings in a can she kept on the stove. When she fried eggs, they always sizzled in bacon fat. Today, I can’t imagine how rancid it must have been, but we all survived. My grandmother didn’t need anything else. I remember her food tasting great.

As I grew and began cooking for myself. the first things I cut out were Crisco and bacon drippings. I started learning about food about the time I started learning about wine. That’s a different story. So, friends introduced me to many of the oils that stock my pantry.

Fragrant sesame oil added zing to Chinese stir fries. And there was a cold Japanese noodle dish that was perfect only when a single drop of sesame oil fell into the dipping sauce.

Grape seed and walnut oils came into the pantry because recipes said they couldn’t, absolutely could NOT, be made without them. The recipes lied. For years I made them without grape seed or walnut oils. No one knew the difference.

And now, there are gourmet shops that sell nothing but fancy oils and vinegar. I didn’t count my vinegar bottles, but I know I have more of them than I do oils. Again, each came when I needed a special vinegar for a recipe.

One oil was essential when I was growing up. Both my mother and grandmother used Johnson’s Baby Oil on their faces and hands to keep them soft. I would mix baby oil and iodine to enhance sun tanning. No sun block for this California kid. Baby oil helped my skin burn. Iodine helped dye it darker. Our homemade answer to Coppertone, which I couldn’t afford.

So, when did oils become a cult substance? And don’t get me started on essential oils. That’s a whole different cult.

What about you? Do you have a houseful of oils?