Salt

by Mark Kurlansky

  In the old Guérande salt port of Le Croisic, in a 1615 thick-beamed, stone waterfront building where merchants used to buy salt for the moored ships, is a restaurant called Le Bretagne. It is one of many restaurants in the Guérande area that specializes in sea bass baked in a salt crust. It is evident from the quantity of salt used that this is a style of cooking either for the very rich or for a modern age of inexpensive salt.

  BAR EN CROUTE DE SEL

  (SEA BASS IN SALT CRUST)

  Choose a sea bass of about two pounds for two people.

  Five to seven pounds of sel de Guérande [gray salt from Guérande]

  Five black peppercorns, thyme, rosemary, tarragon, and fennel

  Clean the fish. Do not scale it.

  Fill the stomach with the herbs and a few turns of a pepper mill.

  Place the fish on a bed of coarse salt in an ovenware dish. Cover the fish with a layer of salt slightly less than an inch thick. Pat it down and moisten it with a spray humidifier.

  Bake it in the oven and decorate with seaweed.—Michèle and Pierre Coïc, Le Bretagne, Le Croisic

  AFTER THOUSANDS OF years of struggle to make salt white and of even grain, affluent people will now pay more for salts that are odd shapes and colors. In the late eighteenth century, British captain James Cook reported that the Hawaiians made excellent salt. However, he complained that on the island of Atooi, today known as Kauai, the salt was brown and dirty. The cause of this was a tradition of mixing the salt with a local volcanic red clay, alaea, which is brick red from a high iron content. Cook did not seem to understand that this “dirty salt” was not intended to be table salt. The salt was made for ritual blessings and religious feasts. It was also used to preserve marlin and as a medicine, especially for purification during periods of fasting. But today this dirty salt, “alaea red salt,” is widely available, sought after by fine chefs and would be gourmets.

  Gray salts, black salts, salts with any visible impurities are sought out and marketed for their colors, even though the tint usually means the presence of dirt. Like the peasants in Sichuan, many consumers distrust modern factory salt. They would rather have a little mud than iodine, magnesium carbonate, calcium silicate, or other additives, some of which are merely imagined. The New Cheshire Salt Works, which does not add iodine, adds sodium hexacyanoferrate II as an anticaking agent. There is no evidence that such chemicals are harmful, and, in the case of iodine, a great deal of evidence that it is healthy. Now there is talk of adding flouride to salt for its health benefits. But modern people have seen too many chemicals and are ready to go back to eating dirt.

  Then, too, many people do not like Morton’s idea of making all salt the same. Uniformity was a remarkable innovation in its day, but it was so successful that today consumers seem to be excited by any salt that is different.

  Among the big winners in this new salt fashion are the old-time producers from the Bay of Bourgneuf. These were the salts that Colbert had complained could be so much more sellable if only the producers would learn to make them whiter. Their impurities had always been a drawback. As recently as 1911, the French pharmacist Francis Marre, warned in his book Défendez votre estomac contre les fraudes alimentaires, “In general the first thing to do [when buying salt] is to make sure it is white, this would give you the best assurance that it is a pure product.” The problem with the Bay of Bourgneuf salt was the dark umber clay at the bottom of the ponds. Particles got caught in the square sodium chloride crystals. But once again, Colbert was wrong. Today’s consumers will pay high prices for the gray salt of Guérande, Noirmoutier, or Ile de Ré.

  Many French traditions vanished in the 1980s, including kigsall, the salted pork of Guérande. In Noirmoutier, the salt business almost died between 1986 and 1994, with only twenty-one salt makers left. In 1995, a group of locals and off-islanders formed a salt cooperative to bring back traditional salt making, and now almost 160 work on the island’s salt ponds and market their salt through the cooperative. Guérande, Noirmoutier, and Ile de Ré have all attracted French people longing to return to agriculture. One-third of the salt makers on Noirmoutier are younger than thirty-five.

  A nineteenth-century postcard of salt rakers harvesting in the Guérande region. Collection of Gildas Buron, Musée des Marais Salants, Batz-sur-Mer

  The paludiers of Guérande used to be locals in that part of Brittany who passed on the work from father to son. But today only 20 percent of the 300 paludiers are local. After two generations of French leaving their villages and their agricultural way of life and moving to the cities, there is a significant minority doing the reverse. They leave Paris to raise ducks in Périgord or oysters on the Atlantic. And some come to Brittany to rake salt in a way that is so traditional that fiberglass poles and rubber tires for wheelbarrows are the only discernible changes in technology since before the Revolution.

  Unlike with the big companies, here the future is quality, not quantity. They command high prices for their salt because it is a product that is handmade and traditional in a world increasingly hungry for a sense of artisans. They make two kinds of salt, the gray salt and fleur de sel. The light, brittle fleur de sel crystals are ten times more expensive than costly gray salt. French salt makers do battle in court over what is true fleur de sel. Guérande has sued Aigues-Mortes—all the more suspect since it was bought by “the Americans”—over its use of the term.

  But fleur de sel is not unique to Brittany, and may be as old as making sea salt. In the second century B.C., Cato gave instructions for making fleur de sel in De agricultura:

  Fill a broken-necked amphora with clean water, place in the sun. Suspend in it a strainer of ordinary salt. Agitate and refill repeatedly; do this several times a day until salt remains two days undissolved. A test: drop in a dried anchovy or an egg. If it floats, the brine is suitable for steeping meat, cheese or fish for salting. Put out this brine in pans or baking dishes in the sun, and leave in the sun until crystallized. This gives you “flower of salt.” When the sky is cloudy, and at night, put indoors; put in the sun daily when the sun shines.

  Skimming the ponds at Guérande for fleur de sel as the sun sets, paludiers can look up and see the silhouette of the Moorish stone steeple of Saint-Guénolé in Batz-sur-Mer across the grassy wetlands. Near the church is the distinct smell of butter and a long line of people in front of the bakery, Biscuits Saint-Guénolé. The bakery was started in the 1920s with the recipes of a woman who sold cakes in the neighborhood. Breton baking is about salt and butter. Although modern refrigeration has made unsalted butter easily available, Bretons insist that salt brings out the flavor of butter.

  Kouing amann, the name of one of the most famous cakes of the region, is Celtic for “piece of butter.” Gérard Jadeau, who runs the shop, says that in his kouing amann, butter makes up half of the total ingredients. It is a buttery dough, layered like puff pastry, rolled flat. Butter is spread on it. Then it is rolled and sliced, and the slices are arranged in a baking dish and put in the oven.

  It is not easy to get this much butter in a cake. The trick is a moderate oven. Too hot, and the butter will separate; too cool, and the butter will keep the dough from baking. But even with this quantity of butter, Breton bakers will say that what gives the cake its buttery flavor is the saltiness.

  Jadeau, between ovens, wrote down on the back of his business card the following recipe for his popular butter cookies:

  GALETTE FINE

  55 kg flour

  30 kg sugar

  20 kg butter

  8 kg eggs

  1k 200 salt

  Mix the dough, let it rest a half an hour, fashion it into cookies and bake.

  “The trick,” he said teasingly, “is always mixing in the right order.” But he refused to say what the correct order was. Clearly, the flour is last, because in baking, flour is always the last ingredient. The butter is probably mixed with the salt first. Jadeau salts his own butter with salt from the same Batz-sur-Mer producer of Guérande salt th
at his shop has been using since 1920.

  Does he use the gray salt?

  “No.”

  Fleur de sel?

  “No, that’s too expensive.”

  He gets a Batz producer to wash the gray salt until it is white and then crush it fine. “I don’t think the gray salt is clean,” he said. “It has dirt in it. This salt I use you could get anywhere. But I am here so I get it here.”

  In the past, this kind of fine, white salt was called in Celtic holen gwenn, white salt, and was rare and expensive, only for the best tables and the finest salted foods. The gray was the cheap everyday salt. The relative value of the white and gray salt is a question of supply, demand, and labor, but also culture, history, and the fashion of the times.

  Why should salt that is washed be cheaper than salt with dirt? Fixing the true value of salt, one of earth’s most accessible commodities, has never been easy.

  Other Books by Mark Kurlansky

  The Basque History of the World

  Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

  A Chosen Few: The Resurrection of European Jewry

  A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny

  The White Man in the Tree and Other Stories (fiction)

  The Cod’s Tale (for children)

  Acknowledgments

  ONE OF THE remarkable experiences of journalism is that as you travel from place to place, people take the time to help you. I especially want to thank Shane Bernard for his research and helpfulness at Avery Island, Gildas Buron for his thoughtful assistance at the Musée Intercommunal des Marais Salants in Batz-sur-Mer, Stephen Fawkes for his help in Great Inagua, Andreu Galera for insights and guidance in Cardona, Cheng Jinfeng for his generous and good-humored assistance in Zigong, Antonio d’Ali for his hospitality in his Trapani saltworks, Marzio Dall’Acqua for his help at the archives in Parma, Professor Guo Zhengzhong of Beijing for sharing his vast knowledge of salt history and his beautiful calligraphy, Oded Harel for his help at the Dead Sea, Bo Masser and family for their hospitality and enthusiastic assistance in Sweden, Paul McIlhenny for his hospitality at Avery Island, Roy Moxham for giving me an early look at his wonderful book, The Great Hedge of India, Fred Plotkin for his help with Italian, Marcel Saule for his generous help in Saliesde-Béarn, Bryan Sheedy for his passionate look at Salt Cay, Peter Sherratt for his assistance in Cheshire, Jill Singleton for her help in San Francisco Bay, Laura Trombetta for her Chinese translation, the generous sharing of her vast knowledge, and her sense of fun and relentless curiosity as a travel companion, Marianne Vleeschhouwer and Anne Kupfer for their help with Dutch.

  An overdue thank you to two institutions that make food history research possible in New York: to Nach Waxman and his magical bookstore, Kitchen Arts & Letters; and to the New York Public Library, whose staff has been helping me all of my reading life in that elegant stone-and-polished wood palace with underground vaults full of everything, including more than 1,000 books on salt.

  A special thanks to my editor, Nancy Miller, for her craft and determination to make me my best, and to my agent, Charlotte Sheedy, for her good humor and wisdom. To George Gibson for his friendship and perfect publishing, and to Linda Johns for her belief in this and for not allowing me to talk myself out of it. Also thanks to Sarah Walker and Sasha Yazdgerdi for all their help. A special thanks to my brother Paul Kurlansky for his insights into chemistry, and to my brother Steven Kurlansky and sister Ellen Brown for their loving support. And a most special thanks to my beautiful wife, Marian Mass, for making me laugh, for making me think, and for her wondrous smile, bright enough to light planets.

  Bibliography

  BOOKS

  Salt History

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  Aggarwal, S. C. The Salt Industry in India. New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1976.

  Andrews, Anthony P. Maya Salt Production and Trade. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1983.

  Bach, Antoni. Història de Cardona. Barcelona: Curial Documents de Cultura, 1992.

  Badia, Enric. La sal, support d’uns pobles. Manresa, Spain: Angle Editorial, 1996.

  Baudry-Weulersee, Delphine. Yantie lun: Dispute sur le sel et le fer (Discourse on salt and iron). Trans. Jean Levi and Pierre Baudry. Paris: J. Lansmann and Seghers, 1978.

  Bergier, Jean-François. Une histoire du sel. Fribourg, Switzerland: Office du Livre, 1982.

  Boudet, Gérard. La Renaissance des Salins du Midi de la France au XIXe Siècle. Paris: Salins du Midi, 1995.

  Bravo Dueñas, Miguel. Mina de Cardona (1929–1989). Grata Lecura, 1998.

  Bridbury, A. R. England and the Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages. London: Oxford University Press, 1955.

  Brownrigg, William. The Art of Making Common Salt. London, 1748.

  Buron, Gildas. Bretagne des Marais Salants: 2000 ans d’histoire. Morlaix: Skol Ureizh, 1999.

  Calvert, Albert F. A History of the Salt Union. London: Effingham Wilson, 1913.

  ———. Salt in Cheshire. New York: Spon and Chamberlain, 1915.

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  Changyong, Zhong, Huang Jian, and Lin Jianyu. A Famous City Zigong: Zigong Salt China (in Chinese) Zigong: Sichuan People’s Publishing House, 1993.

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  Lemonnier, Pierre. Paludiers de Guérande: Production du sel et histoire économique. Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie-Musée de l’Homme, 1984.

  Lonn, Ella. Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy. New York: Walter Neale, 1933.

  Lovejoy, Paul E. Salt of the Desert Sun: A History of Salt Production and Trade in the Central Sudan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

  Marlan, Stanton, ed. Salt and the Alchemical Soul: Three Essays by Ernest Jones, C. G. Jung, and James Hillman. Woodstock, Conn.: Spring Publications, 1995.

  Mendizabal, Miguel Othan de. Influencia de la sal en la distribución geografica de los grupos indigenas de México. Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Arqueologia, Historia y Etnografia, 1928.

  Multhauf, Robert P. Neptune’s Gift: A History of Common Salt. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

  Nenquin, Jacques. Salt: A Study in Economic Prehistory. Bruges: De Tempel, 1961.

  Quinn, William P. The Saltworks of Historic Cape Cod. Orleans: Parnassus Imprints, 1993.

  Piégay, Joseph. Les mulets de sel: Une rebellion paysanne dans le pays du Verdun en 1710. Mane, Haute-Provence: Les Alpes de L
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  Stealey, John E. The Antebellum Kanawha Salt Business and Western Markets. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993.

  Weiss, Harry B., and Grace M. Weiss. The Revolutionary Saltworks of the New Jersey Coast. Trenton: Past Times Press, 1959.

  Food and Food History

  Anonymous. The New Family Receipt-Book: Containing 700 Truly Valuable Receipts in Various Branches of Domestic Economy Selected from the Works of British and Foreign Writers of Unquestionable Experience and Au- thority, and from the Attested Communications of Scientific Friends. London: John Murray, 1810.

  Allen, Brigid. Food: An Oxford Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

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  Anthimus. De obseruatione ciborum (On the observance of food). Trans. Mark Grant. Devon: Prospect Books, 1996.

  Apicius. Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome. Ed. and trans. Joseph Dommers Vehling. New York: Dover, 1977.

  Archestratus. The Life of Luxury. Trans. John Wilkins and Shaun Hill. Devon: Prospect Books, 1994.

  Artusi, Pellegrino. La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene. 1891. Reprint, San Casciano: Sperling and Kupfer Editori, 1991.

  Beeton, Isabella. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. London: S. O. Beeton, 1861. Reprint, London: Jonathan Cape, 1968.

  Billings, John D. Hardtack and Coffee. Boston: George M. Smith, 1887.

  Bober, Phyllis Pray. Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.