[Sca-cooks] pickled grapes

[Jeff Gedney]

Just a note about salt. A large part of the salt used in Europe was not sea
salt. There was a lot of mineral salt. (example would be the Salt towns of
Austria such as Halstatt - the name literally means "Salt Stead").  Mineral
salt frequently has other chemicals, clays and oxides that color it anywhere
from a pale pink to an ugly brown.
It would have to be refined to whiten it.
You did this by mixing it in a dep vat of water and letting the particulate
matter settle out, drawing it off and putting it into shallow pans to
evaporate off and recrystallize.
This might have been done as many as 5 times, to make really fine white
salt.
Sometimes even eggwhites are mixed into the salt water and the brine heated
to coagulate it, this draws even more particulate matter into the egg white
which is skimmed off.
At any point in the process, salt might have been taken off and sold. the
less refined the salt the cheaper it would have been.

This was sometimes done with sea salt, as well, though it was easier to find
a coast where the salt was better tasting because it lacked contaminants in
the water. The coast of Brittany was and still is a fine area for salt
manufacture.
Heavily populated or agricultural coasts were very unfavorable (English sea
salt smelled somewhat like a cesspool from runoff, as I understand it.)
At least one refining step is often needed for sea salt to remove sand and
other contaminants, unless the saltmaker takes extraordinary precautions.

You also had to make it in an area that saw enough sun and warm weather to
enable the salt pans to dry off. Otherwise you had to cook it dry over a
fire (remember the smoked salt discussion ?).

Really pure "white salt" was expensive because of the labor involved.

Brandu