SC - Re: Sea salt

[James F. Johnson]

Seumas replied to Olwen:
> Olwen the Odd wrote:
> > Seumas, why did you choose to use sea salt?  The Apicius recipe just says
> > salt.  I am curious because I know several people who get serious migrain
> > headaches from sea salt.  I don't know _why_ they do, but I have seen it
> > happen several times.
> 
> I've been using sea salt for home cooking for years. It's the salt at
> hand at home. I prefer the flavour which to me is more balanced than
> simple table salt, which leaves a slight bitterness to me. For the
> feasts I've used, I've used mostly simple table salt, primarily for the
> cost and it's what most people are used to. I've encountered a number of
> French recipes that prefer sea salt. I had never heard that it would
> cause migraines. A good thing to know.

My understanding is that in the Middle Ages, the Roman salt mines had
reached the watertable and that all they produced was brine which was
then evaporated to salt. The other source was salt produced by drying
seawater. The latter apparently produced a lower quality salt, but it
was preferred for such tasks as salting fish and meat since the larger
crystals kept it from sealing the surface as easily as the other salt
and thus not completely curing the interior of the fish/meat. The
sea salt was sold at a lower cost.

There was also mining of brine from salt springs.

The German salt mines opened later in the Middle Ages. I can't remember
if all of these are closed now or not. At least one is a big tourist
attraction.

Since this was an Apicius recipe I'm not sure if the Roman salt mines
were still producing salt vs. brine at that time.

For those who might be interested in this, there are these two files
in the COMMERCE section of my Florilegium:
salt-msg          (30K)  6/20/00    Medieval salt production and use.
salt-comm-art     (18K)  1/ 9/97    "Salt of the Earth" by Lord Xaviar.
- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****