Here we come to the third flavor: the salty. We are all familiar with it and crave it on our plates, to the point that a bland, drab, dull, silly, or whatever you want to call a salt-free food, we just don’t like it. Although we are all well aware that too much salt is bad for our health.
Sodium Chloride is, as everyone knows, the chemical name for table salt. Here, “from the kitchen” because, if there is a true protagonist in the kitchen, it is him. It is used to make everything, to salt pasta water, to give flavor to everything, to preserve “in salt,” a very ancient system, to season meats and cheeses, even to bring out other flavors. It is provided, for example, in some pastry recipes to enhance the dessert. Think of some homemade, salted caramel doughnuts.
It is mainly felt on the sides of the tongue, and that is why if we are not sure whether a white grainy powder is sugar or salt we taste it on the tip. If it’s sugar we’ll know right away, if it’s salt we almost can’t feel it.
It enhances all other flavors, As we have already mentioned. The sweet, as we have seen, the sour, and especially the bitter, as those who mistakenly put it in coffee instead of sugar know well. A very peculiar feeling indeed, a real chill.
It should be used carefully and sparingly,
“cum grano salis
“, partly because in earlier times it was rare and expensive, especially in places far from the sea. Le “salt ways“ were leaving from the Mediterranean to reach Central Europe. Some names recall this, Salzburg for all. The salt pans of Margherita di Savoia are one of the most incredible places in Italy, a small salt desert next to the Adriatic Sea in Puglia. But the salt pans of Trapani and Marsala are also a sight to behold. There are also salt mines or, rather, rock salt, because salt and salty taste is simply essential, and getting it is important.
Here are last weeks’ articles on Sour and Sweet:
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