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Common table salt. Sodium chloride. Like all mammals we cannot live without it, but today we are more used to hearing about the dangers of excessive use of salt rather than about its gastronomic enhancement. Actually, as Mark Kurlansky’s very excellent book makes clear, there are 14,000 uses of salt: for pharmaceuticals, softening water, making soap, dying textiles, preserving food and deicing roads. In fact, the need for salt has been so strong over the ages that it has been a political football. One of the major concerns of the North in the American Civil War was to keep the South from producing salt. The importance of local control of salt was stressed by Ghandi when he defied British ruling to deprive Indians of the right to produce their own salt by simply bending over and illegally picking up a salt crystal from the ground.

Kurlansky´s very readable account is chockfull of interesting bits of history. He begins with the ancient Chinese, who were harvesting salt crystals from a dry lake bed by 6000 B.C. They also built bamboo piping that looks like a rickety roller coaster to transport brine over a longer distance. The ancient Egyptians and the Romans cured meat and fish with salt and the Romans were addicted to the use of garum and other salty sauces made from fish innards and scraps. Roman soldiers were paid a salt stipend (hence our word salary). Iceland still exports bacalao, salted codfish, to the Mediterranean area. And the Swedes still produce surströming (fermented herring), eaten with mashed potato and preferably consumed outdoors where the strong aroma can dissipate upward to the heavens!

In more modern times salt has acquired other uses. We tend to forget that Salzburg means Salt City, as does Hallein. The Nazis in World War II stashed Raphael and Rembrandt paintings in a salt mine for safekeeping, along with US dollars and gold. Today the huge salt mines in Europe have become tourist attractions. In some, you can ride down the long wooden slides built for the miners to descend into the mine. Even the chandeliers in the huge Grand Hall in the Wieliczka mine are entirely of salt.

This is a book for just about anyone, young or old, to enjoy, even to savor. It is well illustrated, very readable, and you can try the recipes. You can certainly refer back to it from time to time, especially as there is a good index, though not as complete as it should be. And you will certainly come away with a much greater appreciation of the importance of salt to the history of mankind.