Reflection on Salt: World’s history by Mark Kurlansky

               The history of salt reminded me of the book I read about oil by Daniel Yergin, however, while the commodity described by Yergin became much more important in the 19^th century, salt became much less importance due to the development of refrigeration and other preservation methods. What I mainly got from this book was the fun facts that are listed below. I guess it is also important to note that salt was an absolutely crucial thing to have for millennia until refrigeration was invented, reducing demand and when vacuum production of salt was developed, drastically increasing supply. Today, salt is so plentiful that the most common use is to throw it onto roads to keep them from freezing. In the USA, only 8 percent of salt is for food, 52 percent is for salting northern highways.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• The first recorded use of natural gas was in China in the year 200 AD, when it was discovered in deep salt mines and used for boiling brine.
• The word soldier comes from the same root as the word salt, as soldiers were paid in salt in ancient times.
• Anglo-Saxons called a saltworks a “wich,” so towns with “wich” in the name are likely sites of old saltworks or named after a town with saltworks.
• To begin pickling, you must make a brine. To know if the brine is salty enough, you can use the oldest method there is, test it by placing an egg into the brine. If the egg floats, you are ready to begin pickling.
• Butter, because it easily spoils in the sunlight, tends to be a northern food, while those in southern Europe and in other places closer to the equator used oil, often olive oil.
• Ketchup derives its name from an Indonesian sauce of fish and soy called “kecap ikan.” Salty sauces made with fish could be found all over the world throughout history as condiments, from Rome (where it was called “garum”) to Japan, where it became soy sauce.
• Hunters in New England in colonial times used to leave red herring along their trail to confuse wolves by the scent, forming the origin of the phrase “red herring.”
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