How did salt & pepper become such a table-standard? I would guess that salt is a standard because of its longstanding use as a preservative, maybe further promoted when iodine started being added (let me know if I’m on the wrong track here). But why pepper? (As opposed to other spices)
It's actually one of the commonly asked questions on this sub. There's a ton of cool info in the info/wiki/etc section, including answers about salt and pepper.