Condimentary History (Salt: A World History – Mark Kurlansky)

Few materials have undergone a transformation as dramatic as salt’s. For thousands of years, it was a precious commodity and a vital nutrient. At times it was even used as currency. Today it is usually the cheapest item by weight in a grocery store. It is demonized for its possible unhealthiness. The long, rich evolution of salt is chronicled in Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: A World History. Though not flawless, Salt is an enjoyable and enlightening exploration of the way this common rock has shaped human life through history.

A word of caution to my fellow history nerds: Salt is not a nitty-gritty work of economic history. If you yearn, as I half-did, for a complex analysis of the technical means used to produce, distribute, and consume salt throughout the ages, prepare for disappointment. When it suits him, Kurlansky can produce clear, detailed passages of political or economic history. His explanations of the fundamentals of the 18^th century Atlantic salt trade or how the French Revolution was influenced by the gabelle, the hated salt tax, were satisfying, but Kurlansky is happiest citing medieval cookbooks to show how Eastern European housewives used salt to pickle cabbages.

That quibble aside, Salt does a great job of using the title substance to illuminate the past. Salt’s versatility gives Kurlansky license to explore an assortment of diverse areas. He deals with basics, like the use of salt as a condiment and in food preservation, but he also discusses the Basque salted cod industry (and the intriguing question of whether wandering Basque fishermen reached the New World before the Vikings), a Roman sauce of fermented fish guts known as garum, and the relationship between salt mining and the petroleum industry.

Salt also delights by giving the reader concrete insight into the past. I poked fun at picked cabbage recipes earlier, but those sort of sources show how people actually lived (even if they are a bit fluffy for “serious” history.) The author uses numerous primary sources to illustrate the reality of many of the abstract facts he relates. No prose discourse can convey the importance of salt in everyday life as well as Confederate newspaper articles trying to provide ways for desperate Southern homes to function without salt.

When it reaches the modern day, the book loses some of its luster. Part of the problem is that salt is mostly used as a straight condiment, no longer to preserve foods or in curious sauces. Also, salt, now cheap and readily available, has lost much of its former mystique. Even so, I would have liked to see Kurlansky give a greater explanation of how the salt industry works in the present day and how exactly it got that way. More discussion of the health issues surrounding the substance would also have been welcome.

Salt has its weak points, but it also has a strong heart in its exploration of salt’s heyday, the time when sodium chloride was vital to human health, food preservation, and cuisine. To a modern reader, such a time is completely foreign, but Kurlansky brings it to life. This feat more than makes up for the book’s failings and leaves the reader with a fun, illuminating historical experience.