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By Root 437 0

winds of the northern latitudes until it developed the strength of plywood. The Basques, though, at that time, were using salt to preserve their cod; salted cod lasted longer than air-dried cod (and it didn’t spoil as did their salted whale meat, which was high in fat, and thus easily became rancid). They also secretly fished for cod in the New World (keeping the discovery of Nova Scotia to themselves, centuries before Columbus crossed the Atlantic), then salting it to sell throughout Catholic Europe, no doubt a thriving trade on meatless Fridays and during Lent, when pork was off limits. The longer a culture could preserve food, the farther its members could journey and explore; salt pork was common fare on extended voyages. The age of great exploration several centuries later could only have happened after cultures learned how to preserve large amounts of food for long journeys.

Salt’s purpose in our body is to help to regulate fluid exchange at the cellular level. It works this way: heightened salt concentration outside a cell (more specifically, electrically charged sodium ions, atomic particles) results in a fluid exchange out of the cell, water moving across the selectively permeable membrane, to reduce the sodium concentration outside the cell and raise the potassium concentration within the cell. Our cells are fed and nourished through this fluid exchange.

The key here is the selectively permeable membrane. Such a membrane allows certain kinds of molecules to flow through it, such as water and salt and other electrolytes, but not bigger molecules, such as proteins. A semipermeable membrane is like a tea bag, which lets water pass through it, but not the tea leaves.

When we put a piece of meat into an environment in which the salt concentration is very high (as with a brine or dry cure), the same exchange happens in the cells of the meat as happens in our body: Attracted by sodium’s ions, water rushes out of the cells to join them. Equilibrium is always sought, so there is a continual back-and-forth movement across the membrane as the concentrations shift and salt in solution enters the cells of the meat (bringing some flavoring) and returns to the brine or cure (along with blood). The ionic charges also change the shape of the proteins, loosening them and allowing them to contain more moisture.

By pulling water out of the meat, salt, by definition, dehydrates it. When it enters the cells of the meat, it also dehydrates the microbes that cause decay and spoilage and other potentially hazardous bacteria, either killing them or inhibiting their ability to multiply. This is salt’s main preservative mechanism—dehydrating microbes. A secondary preservative effect is that it reduces the amount of water in the meat, which microbes need in order to thrive.

Virtually every food group can be salted to excellent effect. Eggs can be pickled (a pickle is a brine that includes a strong acidic component). Most fruits and vegetables can be preserved through some sort of salting, sugaring, or pickling.

Of all the world’s foods that can be preserved to great effect, the pig has proved to be by far the most versatile. It is the only animal that has generated its own culinary specialty: charcuterie.

In the same way that salt is a kind of unsung marvel, the pig is an animal whose glories go largely unrecognized in America. In France they like to say that every part of the pig is used except the oink. That’s not quite true. The utilitarian French scald off the bristles, and they have yet to find a use for the toenails. But other than that, everything is used. Furthermore, the pig provides a range of widely differing things to eat, more in fact than any single other animal we know of. Compare it to beef, for example, where you’ve got everything from the tenderloin to the tough shank—but it’s all pretty similar in taste, whether filet mignon, stewing beef, or hamburger.

The pig, on the other hand, gives us ham, fresh sausage, tenderloin, chops, ribs, hocks, trotters, and blood for boudin noir, all of them with distinct differences