Salt.
It has been around for centuries. I remember reading in school how thrilled the British were with it when Colombus returned from India with it and they began using it on everything and sailors around the world would cure meat for their voyages with it; and driving India to gain independence from Britain.
Salt has impacted virtually every human civilization in recorded history. Placement of settlements, neolithic and nomadic groups searched for it and traded it for gold! How many of us can recount tales in any culture of offering bread to visitors to your home or town? Certainly the Bible, possibly the most widely read book throughout our history, has many references to salt; and many catch phrases such as “worth their salt” or “salt of the earth” has sprung from such sources. Although “worth his salt” stemmed from Ancient Greece where slaves were exchanged for salt, rather bleak, but it highlights the importance and value placed on salt, even then!
There is even an economic and military significance to salt! It has provided grounds on which to trade goods and to pay Roman soilders for their efforts. Once called salarium, which is the entemology of today’s “salary.” Salt, it simply amazing! It has the ability to make sweet things taste sweeter, mask bitter tastes and making naturally bitter foods (like chocolate) taste delicious! It even retards the growth of microrganisms that causes food to spoil!
So many people, huges fans of salt – yet me? I love it on mashed potatoes and roast beef, in moderation, but I could not possibly sprinkle it on cookies or even use a pinch or dash of it in any sort of baking recipe. And certainly I would not “salt to taste!”
But then I began really cooking, and realizing that in savory cooking, I use salt all the time, it is my number one go-to herb/spice in my mise en place by the stove! So why would it be such a problem to use it in baking?
Most bakers would argue that the pinch of salt in completely and utterly necessary and it goes unnoticed in the end product. I now realize, that it brings out all sorts of natural flavors in the food. I have begun to make small steps to overcome my “fear” of salt and use it. Sparingly at first, then testing the end product, and then more and more each time until I am happy with the amount that the recipe requires. This is especially important for me to be this tentative with salt because in baking, you dont know how it is going to turn out until it is done and I would rather avoid throwing out lots of baked goods because they were too salty.
Maybe, it is the growing debate that, being part American myself, that Americans have – as a culture, a disease called obesity. It is something that my husband fears! As many other people concern themselves with it. Even though salt naturally occurs in sweat, and we “need” it and consume it, so many people are concerned with the rate and volume at which we consume salt.
Growing up, in my mother’s kitchen, she limited the use of salt to the amount required to produce our family dinners and neglected to set a salt shaker out on the table. This made roast beef, one of the most entertaining meals we could eat, as I would (secretly, of course) search for the rump ends of the roast, where the most salt was deposited, scraping off the excess salt and eating a perfect bite of roast beef and a mound of rice on my fork, which was perfectly seasoned! The further you get into the roast, the sweet, salty taste diminished and the meat became more bland, so it was important to get the rump end. But other dishes we ate, had just the perfect amount of seasoning, so that you could not taste the salt, but rest assured, it was there!
Maybe, doing something as simple, as not providing excess salt throughout a meal would decrease our culture’s fear of salt and obesity? *shrugs* I certaintly don’t add additional salt to my meal when I eat out. Restaurants of today dont add additional salt, or render out natural salts from other foods to complete a dish, so that the diner should not need to add additional salt or seasonings. And as a growing cook, I find myself (slightly) offended if my husband and I sit down to a meal and he adds salt to his food – it maybe happened once, by the way… usually he adds sriracha! The man LOVES sriracha!
Red Cock Sauce! as my husband says!
Then I sit and wonder what I could have done to make the dish better… but the “red cock sauce” is always a ready condiment for any dish my husband eats, except cereal – but I wouldn’t put it past him!
As I raise my own daughter in my own kitchen, I noticeably limit her salt intake. In fact, until she is old enough to appreciate the difference, she will not have added salts to her foods, unless it is a dish I prepare with salt. There will be no salt shaker on her dinner table either, in hopes that it increases her ability to taste natural flavors and develop her palate so that she may one day appreciate the foodie that her mother is slowly becoming.