So we spoke about the black teeth and sugar! How can we leave the next white thing we use so much in our house away!
The salt! Salt has so much history!
Salt is so important that your dishes are nothing without it! Most of the time the taste of the food is solely dependent on the quantity of salt!
The best cooks in the world are the ones who can SALT their dish properly! The perfect balance is a very small range so it is very important to get it!
But (he he!) did you know that before it became a cheap, everyday condiment, salt was a luxury commodity as valuable as gold, a driver of empires, and a symbol of high social status!
That line has started to become old! Sugar, pepper and even aluminium which are so routine now were once a commodity of the elite!
Then again that is how it is!
Salt is very vital to give the food its taste and also for a more important role!
Preservation!
Because it was the only way to preserve food before refrigeration!
The Romans constructed the Via Salaria (Salt Road) specifically to transport it. Roman soldiers were often paid a special allowance to buy salt, a stipend called salarium—which is the direct origin of the modern English word “salary” (That was already explained in a blog long time ago!)
In fact even the origin of the word SALAD is credited to SALT!
The Romans used heavy salt brines to dress fresh raw vegetables to cut the bitterness, giving us the word salad!
Now during the Middle Ages even though salt moved onto the dining table it was used as a literal divider of social status!
The poverty line was literally the SALT line!
Wealthy households placed a massive, highly decorative master bowl of salt (called a saltcellar) in the middle of the dining table!
The host and important guests sat “above the salt” (close to the host and the expensive mineral), while lower-status guests and servants sat “below the salt,” far out of reach of the condiment!
For centuries, European tables featured an array of heavy, masked spices like nutmeg, cloves, and ginger to disguise the taste of poorly preserved food!
The shift to our modern table setup happened because of King Louis XIV of France.
The King apparently was notoriously picky and despised heavily spiced food, believing that dishes should taste like their natural ingredients.
He banned almost all exotic spices from the royal kitchen, allowing only salt and black pepper. Because French cuisine dictated global elite trends, the salt-and-pepper pairing rapidly spread across Europe and eventually to the Americas, cementing them as the default table duo!
So a stubborn king with fussy taste buds gave you those salt and pepper shakers! But the history is not done yet! Since the salt has to FLOW!
Even when salt became standard on the table, it wasn’t kept in a shaker. Salt naturally absorbs moisture from the air, meaning it would constantly clump together into hard blocks that had to be scraped or broken apart.
Diner tables relied on small open “salt dips” with tiny spoons!
Everything changed in 1911, when the Morton Salt Company began adding magnesium carbonate—an anti-caking agent—to their fine salt crystals.
This allowed the salt to flow freely even in high humidity.
To market this invention, they introduced the iconic Umbrella Girl and the famous slogan: “When it rains, it pours.”!
This single innovation made the modern mechanical salt shaker possible and affordable for every household!
So now are when you reach out for that SALT shaker and ASSAULT (salty joke!) it; remember how lucky you are!
Luck also is a major play when you watch a movie in the anticipation that it turns out to be good! Then again if it has people like Vikram Gokhale then luck may be on your side!
Now do not take too much salt in the night and sleep!
Shubh Ratri…
