Salt

Salt might seem like a weird subject to write about, but author Mark Kurlansky makes it interesting. he put out a book in 2002 called Salt: A World History. Anyone who likes historical minutiae or loves knowing about food history will dig it.

Salt sits on every restaurant table today, but in bygone times it was tremendously valued. Like any substance that humanity places a value on, it has its own mythos and customs. People have sweated and died for the stuff. Wars have been fought for the sake of salt. Probably more blood has been split over salt than any other substance, even oil, which is relatively young as a substance of value.

Salt has so many uses and so rich a history that it has been a symbol for many things, often at cross purposes: for sexuality as well as for purity. The author of this magnificent and well researched book speaks salt in fairy-tales, of industries dependent on salt and salt's preservative powers. It's not hard to see the grandeur of salt when Kurlansky writes of it, as it preserved the Egyptian dead and raised empires.

But here's a taste, just the first section of his intro:

"I BOUGHT THE rock in Spanish Catalonia, in the rundown hillside mining town of Cardona. An irregular pink trapezoid with elongated, curved indentations etched on its surface by raindrops, it had an odd translucence and appeared to be a cross between rose quartz and soap. The resemblance to soap came from the fact that it dissolved in water and its edges were worn smooth like a used soap bar.

I paid too much for it -- nearly fifteen dollars. But it was, after all, despite a rosy blush of magnesium, almost pure salt, a piece of the famous salt mountain of Cardona. The various families that had occupied the castle atop the next mountain had garnered centuries of wealth from such rock.

I took it home and kept it on a windowsill. One day it got rained on, and white salt crystals started appearing on the pink. My rock was starting to look like salt, which would ruin its mystique. So I rinsed off the crystals with water. Then I spent fifteen minutes carefully patting the rock dry. By the next day it was sitting in a puddle of brine that had leached out of the rock. The sun hit the puddle of clear water. After a few hours, square white crystals began to appear in the puddle. Solar evaporation was turning brine into salt crystals.

For a while it seemed I had a magical stone that would perpetually produce brine puddles. Yet the rock never seemed to get smaller. Sometimes in dry weather it would appear to completely dry out, but on a humid day, a puddle would again appear under it. I decided I could dry out the rock by baking it in a small toaster oven. Within a half hour white stalactites were drooping from the toaster grill. I left the rock on a steel radiator cover, but the brine threatened to corrode the metal. So I transferred it to a small copper tray. A green crust formed on the bottom, and when I rubbed off the discoloration, I found the copper had been polished.

My rock lived by its own rules. When friends stopped by, I told them the rock was salt, and they would delicately lick a corner and verify that it tasted just like salt.

Those who think a fascination with salt is a bizarre obsession have simply never owned a rock like this."