Salt and pepper both enhance the flavor of food without changing the taste or adding additional flavors, in my opinion, which makes both of them maximally versatile and leads to their primacy.

However, I'm curious now if my assessment of black pepper as unflavored is due to just eating so much of it through my life that I don't realize it has a taste.

Black pepper definitely has a taste, like I can taste it on food and I add more when it's needed. Try tasting a steak and then add some pepper and see if you can't literally taste it, or even try it with bread or rice or anything really. Or have I just gone mad?

It may be that the zesty quality of pepper outpaces any taste. I’m curious to put it on something bland now to see if I can taste it, but my original comment was meant to convey that I might be blind to the actual taste of black pepper as a result of its cultural omnipresence.

It also loses some of its flavor - but keeps its bite - as it ages too much. Particularly after grinding. Try it with freshly purchased, fresh ground.

I personally can’t taste black pepper, although I enjoy the smell. But I once asked my parents about this and they both said they definitely could taste it.

It is said that Louis XIV preferred pepper, and this preference is what lead to pepper's eventual dominance in the West.

I don't have a great source for this, but here's a gizmodo article... https://gizmodo.com/how-salt-and-pepper-became-the-yin-and-y...

Most spices can't be added after cooking so there's that