Salt: The Invisible Gold

Originally appeared June 12, 2009 in Research, Writing Fiction, Writing Non-Fiction | Tags: writing, Research, food, kurlansky

One of the best reference books I’ve come across in recent years — certainly the most entertaining — is Mark Kurlansky’s “Salt”, published in 2002. The information in this book opened my eyes to the incredible variety and history of something I’ve always taken for granted, and provided several major and minor plot points for the world of my novels.

I suspect that any modern person eating an authentic Middle Ages style dish would be appalled at the amount of salt involved; “Most of the salt consumed by Romans,” says Kurlansky, “was already in their food when they bought it at the market. Salt was even added to wine in a spicy mixture called defrutum, which, in the absence of bottling corks, was used to preserve the wine.” I never even thought about when bottling corks were invented! Salt was also a status symbol and etiquette marker: “since salt symbolized the binding of an agreement, the absence of a salt cellar on a banquet table would have been interpreted as an unfriendly act and reason for suspicion.”

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history, writing fiction, or just looking for a good read. But you can’t borrow my copy–go get your own!