[Sca-cooks] Icelandic Smoked Salt??? & "Viking" restaurant...

[Decker, Terry D.]

Fascinating.  Most of what I've seen on the subject of salt manufacture has
salt mined (as in the Salzkammergut) or evaporated from brine either by
boiling or by solar heating.  I don't recall any references to "smoked
salt."

The earliest reference I have been able to find for "smoked salt" is
information for using Old Hickory Smoked Salt from around 1900.  It was
meant for salt curing meat and giving it a smoked flavor without having to
resort to a smoke house.

You might check Mark Kurlansky's SALT: A World History.  I haven't read it
yet, so it may have references I haven't seen.

Bear

> The subject of a smoked salt was raised, and it occurred to me that
> drying salt over a smoky fire (similar to the original process of
> drying malt over smoky fires, part of what makes Scotch whisky kewl),
> might be a natural extension of trying to obtain salt from the sea
> without the shallows and intense sunlight of, say, the coasts of
> India. <etc., etc. etc.>
>
> Adamantius