Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [40]
The tools used to produce the salt differ in each context as well. Traditionally mined salt relies primarily on hand labor, employing only a light-rail system for the removal of the ore from the mountains. Industrial salts are thoroughly polluted by the diesel-powered heavy machinery used in mining, and therefore require refining if they are to be sold for culinary use.
There is a last consideration, one that applies to all salts, be they solar-evaporated, fire-evaporated, or mined. Art historians use the term aura to describe the intangible but nonetheless profound sense of an object’s unique identity in the world—you know the feeling. There is the electrifying impression of genius, the existential tug of history, the sense of presence. Great cuisine does this for us, too. Traditional salts represent some of the greatest achievements in human ingenuity, are born of the most ancient traditions, and resonate with a diamond’s mineral splendor. They are the crown jewels of great food.
THE TAXONOMY OF SALT
He La I ka pa’akai ’ole, He la mana’ona’o no!
A day without salt is a dreadful day indeed!
—Hawaiian saying
Historically, the categorization of salts has been haphazard. Some, such as fleur de sel and sel gris, started out as regionally specific salts and have evolved into universal categories. Others, such as flake salt, have emerged as artisan salt makers introduced sophisticated crystals to increasingly interested markets. Yet others have been misclassified. It is not uncommon for a sea salt in the shape of a pebble to be called “rock salt.” Conversely, marketers rather disingenuously use the term “sea salt” for rock salts mined from the earth, based on the argument that mined salt deposits are residues of ancient seas. To be useful, descriptions of our one crystalline food must both encompass the limitless creativity of nature and make it accessible to cuisine.
Artisan salts fit into seven classes: fleur de sel, sel gris, traditional, flake, shio, rock, and unconventional. There are two additional classes outside this scheme: “Modified salt” is defined as any of the above classes of salt that is altered after its formation, including flavored and smoked salts. Last are the “industrial salts,” which are classified separately.
The boundaries between classes are not crystal clear, nor even is the distinction between artisan and industrial salts—some industrial salt makers skillfully produce wonderfully interesting salts. The grains of the most delicate sel gris can be finer than the most ungainly fleur de sel. Some flake salts are so crumbly they might also be described as granular traditional salts. In the context of this book, when the classification is a particularly close call, I will assign the class that helps us best understand how to use the salt and what to expect of it.
Guides such as this one are inherently incomplete. I learn about two or three new salts a week—even in a slow week—and it is not uncommon for me to encounter entire new vistas of salt when I least expect it. When I am translating foreign language publications, or when I have them translated for me, sometimes dozens of obscure or forgotten salts emerge. Most agreeably, sometimes a beautiful person will walk into the shop, eyes gleaming with mischief, and place into my hands something sparkly just hauled back from the Mongolian steppes, or a bay in Alaska, or an encampment on the dunes of the Sahara. And the marketplace for salt is moving fast. Everyone interested in salt has something different to share. Some salts are named, renamed, and branded in countless ways.
Codifying a subject as deep and unknowable as the