Query: why "salt and pepper" but not "pepper and salt"?

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:53 PM -0400 5/17/05, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>>This evening I received the following query: Why do we always say
>>>"salt and pepper" and never "pepper and salt?"
>
>>I believe it's one of the "freezes" or fixed binomials listed in
>>Cooper & Ross's "World Order" paper on the topic in the CLS
>>Functionalism volume (1975).
>
>But the order is not fixed in all contexts, surely. MW3 defines
>"salt-and-pepper" simply as "pepper-and-salt", under which is given the
>usual meanings along the lines of "flecked dark and light". There are also
>entries for "pepper-and-salt cat" and "... moth". In my experience
>"pepper-and-salt mustache" for example is more frequent than
>"salt-and-pepper ...".
>
>As for "please pass the ..." etc. I've heard "pepper and salt" although
>less often than "salt and pepper". However, presumably the combination of
>condiments is ancestral to the color expression, so I suppose "pepper and
>salt" cannot have been too absurd in the popular mind even in the condiment
>sense.
>
>It is my casual impression that the order here is less fixed than in some
>other combinations such as "bread and butter".
>
not to mention "gin and tonic", "scotch and soda", etc., which Cooper
& Ross attribute to the "power source first" subgeneralization.

L