[Sca-cooks] sea salt vs. white-salt

[Stefan li Rous]

Nancy Kiel asked in reply to a statement I originally made:
> When we pickle things at work, we use kosher salt, and it has very large
> crystals.  Would that be like a period salt?     Anne S., slaving away over
> a hot bar grate
>
>>>for food preservation because the salt crystals were larger due to the
>>>slower evaporation time.


I get the impression that the medieval sea salt flakes were bigger than
what you commonly get these days in kosher salt, and probably less uniform
and certainly less pure. But kosher salt is probably the closest, easily
available inexpenisve salt to use if you are wanting to try salting foods
in a period way. For other uses it may not make that much differance from
other salts, but at least it is not that much more expensive than "normal"
salt.

Stefan li Rous
stefan at florilegium.org