Precious salt

Today we take our herbs and spices for granted. Although literally, salt is not a herb because it isn't derived from a plant, I have included it here because we use it as if it was another herb.

Salt is a common item in any kitchen now but it wasn't always that way. It was so valuable, during the Roman times that they paid their soldiers in salt or while on campaigns, they were given at least enough to buy salt. In Latin salt is "sal" or "salis" and a soldier was paid his wages in salt or salary once a month. Today we still call a wage that is paid monthly, a salary.

Because most salt that was consumed came from the sea, and contains small amounts of iodine, the medical condition called goiter which is commonly caused by an Iodine defficiency, was very rare. As travel and developed, our diet came to include salt from other sources, without any Iodine. Today goitre is much more common in our population as a result.

Today we consume far too much salt. It added to almost everything we eat and is related to many forms of cardiac disease. Many countries are pressuring food manufacturers to reduce the salt content in their products.

Even back in Neolithic times, salt was a precious commodity. Have you ever stopped to wonder why?

Seven tenths of the world is covered in salt water but it is not easy to extract that salt. It requires large shallow ponds to trap the water and months of fine weather to evaporate out the water and leave the salt. That may sound easy today, but with no earthmoving equipment and a lifestyle that requires nearly all waking time to find food and shelter, evaporating seawater was a task beyond most civilations. Most salt was mined from rock salt deposits and traded. Unlike coins, it was consumed by everyone. It was therefore valuable and ideal for the Romans to use as a currency.

In Ancient China they boiled vats of brine to extract the salt and this way, they were not dependent on the weather.

Brine being boiled down to sea salt at the Xinhai Well in Zigong,
China. Ithas been done this way for over 1,000 years here.

How was salt used
I have seen documentaries that claim salt was prized by all societies because of it's flavour but that's not quite true.

The coming of winter meant a time of famine. No grass would grow to feed stock, even in areas that were not covered in snow. Some summer grass was cut and stored as hay or silage. A few of the best animals were kept over winter and fed with the stored hay. These would be used to start the herds and flocks off again next spring. All other livestock was slaughtered and as much as possible was preserved.

But how do you preserve meat?
The slaughter had to be done before the winter snows, white the animals were fat from the summer grazing. It you waited for the winter, they lost condition and the colder wet weather made preserving meat impossible. The easist way to preserve meat was to salt the meat and dry it. The meat would dry out with the salt. It was then hung from the roof beams. Some was hung over the smokey fire they kept burning for warmth and as a result, was smoked. This created your hams, bacons and salamis.

Bacon is salted and smoked pork

Solutions of brine (salt dissolved in water until no more salt will disolve) in wooden vats were used to preserve meats for shorter periods. Today we call these meats "corned" (as in Corned Beef) or "pickled" (as in Pickled Pork).

Salami is smoked salted pork with herbs, all stuffed into animal intestine and smoked.

Fish was cleaned or gutted and split in two flat halves. these were rubbed with dry salt and laid on racks to dry in the sun. Today they are a delicacy sold in select delicatessens and called Bacala. Some fish was rubbed with salt and smoked - what we know today as "Kippers" or "Smoked Fish".

Salted fish drying in Iceland

Birds were "pressed" to keep them over the winter. This was usually possible with marine birds that were salty and oily. They were gutted split open, salted, dried and placed in a wooden barrel with stone weights. The oily fats were squeezed out and were so salty that they formed a preservative. Today the Maori people in New Zealand still do this with "Mutton Birds", one of their favourite delicacies. You'd have to be very brave to stand between a barrel of mutton birds and a few hungry Maoris!

There is one common ingredient in all the above food preservation methods - salt.

Now add preserved vegetables, like saurkraut (cabbage pickled in brine), olives (pickled in brine) and a host of other ethnic delicacies done in brine and you start to see why salt was so valuable. It was not because of taste as a seasoning. It was because it was a means of food preservation - a hedge against famine over the long cold winters.

Wich and wych are names used to denote brine springs or wells in England. Originally derived from the Latin vicus, meaning place, by the 11th century use of the 'wich' suffix in placenames was associated with towns with salt production. Even in the Inca culture, salt extraction was an important industry. Here are the salt ponds at Marau, Peru.

Ancient Inca salt ponds in Maras, Peru.

In ancient times trade routes were established to transport salt from the mines and drying ponds to the towns in salt caravans. Africa with it's warm dry climate was a major source of salt. Here in Ahamedala salt miners lever up a slab of dried salt from the saltpan - a dried up salt lake.

Ahamedala salt miners lever up a slab of dried salt from the saltpan - a dried up salt lake.

It will be cut into a smaller slab and loaded onto the salt caravan. It has been done this way since the Romans developed the salt caravan trade route into Europe in Pre-Christian times.

A salt caravan - salt has been trasported from the mines to the markets
this way for thousands of years

Today our diet is low in Iodine, causing Thyroid disorders. To overcome this, we add iodine to our salt.

Why do we add salt and herbs to our cooking?

Today we tend to think of our herbs as additives to recipes but Many of these recipes have herbs for a very good reason:

Before the invention of refrigeration, meat was usually pickled in brine or smoked to preserve it over the winter months. This is where we developed our taste for ham, bacon and salami. In winter the pastures lay dormant or under a blanket of snow. Hay was cut and stored to feed the best animals over the bleak winter months and all but the best farm animals were slaughtered at the end of summer in a communal feast called Martinmas or Belhane - what we now call Halloween.

A family admires the fat goose bought home for thr Martinmas feast

 This was a great feast to use up any produce that could not be stored for the winter. Prime beef was salted or "corned" - hence the Corned Beef we use today. Pork was soaked in brine, then rubbed in salt and hung in the rafters over the fire which slowly smoked the meat into filches of bacon and hams. Fish was cleaned and split flat to be packed between layers of salt until it was dried then hung in the rafters. Small fish, too small to hang were stored in oil in large pottery jars called crocks, after salting.

Many vegetables were also preserved for the bleak winters. Caggage was pickled in brine (saurktaut), onions and small cucumbers in vinegar (gherkins and pickled onions) and other vegetables like cauliflower, carrots and turnips were chopped up and dropped into boiling vinegar, with herbs and stored in pottery jars of oil for winter - we call this anitpasta today.

Fruit was dried (eg figs and grapes), made into wine or like apples stored in the dark, to slow the ripening process.

All of these methods are successful ways of preserving foods and have given rise to many delicacies we eat today (bacon, ham, herrings, pickles, salami, olives, kippers, bakala, tinned fish, raisins etc). However in the damp cold middle ages, when homes were not heated like today and nowhere near as dry, often the meat was turning or "off" before spring and the addition of herbs helped add some taste. Even if the meat was good, it had to be boiled to reduce the salt preservative to a level that was palletable. This boiling usually removed any flavour along with the salt. Herbs added some flavour. Herbs like Cardamom that only came from the mystical "Orient" were often worth more than gold, by weight.

Strewing herbs
These were were used along with rushes and or straw as a floor covering throughout Europe from the late medieval to early Renaissance periods (~1000 to 1650 AD). The rushes and straw provided cushioning to the occupants feet, provided warmth in the winter, and helped to absorb excess moisture from rain, sleet, snow, spilt food and beverages. These plant materials were used to cover the floors of houses before carpets were commonly used as a floor covering. Medieval church festivals started early and many villagers slept the night on the church rush floors to be there at the beginning of the festival.

A variety of herbs were often used along with the rushes and straw in order to exploit their aromatic and insect repellent properties. These herbs were called stewing herbs because they were thrown or strewn upon the floors. The occupants of the house would cause the herbs to be crushed underfoot as they went about their daily business causing the herbs to be crushed and thier essential oils to be released. Strewing herbs would be used in all areas of the household including the dinning hall, kitchen, and bedrooms.

During the later medieval through to the Renaissance periods rushes were replaced in European churches once a year on what was called rush-bearing Sunday. The old layer of rushes would be cleaned out and a new layer added to help keep the church attendants feet warm and dry. Aromatic herbs such as meadowsweet and, sage would sometimes be strewn along with the rushes.

Herbs and Spices
Most people have a few favourite herbs and spices, that they use repeatedly. There are some great combinations that take your meals to exotic places.

Do you know know the added health effects herbs and spices have on your food (eg, cinnamon performs similar to insulin)?

Did you know that vanilla is the only edible product from the orchid family?

There are some amazing stories about herbs, their origins and their properties. Not surprising when you realise that many herbs and spices were the forerunners of today's pharmaceuticals. This is where you will discover the magic mixes of spices that turn food into Chinese, Indonesian or Indian cuisine.

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