Vol. XI · Flavour Plate 3 of 12salt, seasoning, percentage, bitterness, soup, pasta water, brine, when to salt, soy sauceF

Salt.

A well-seasoned soup is about 1 % salt. Below 0.6 % it tastes flat; above 1.5 % it tastes salty. The window is narrow, so measure.

Salt is the one seasoning nearly every savoury dish needs, and its effect goes beyond saltiness. A little salt suppresses bitterness — in coffee, grapefruit, bitter greens and dark chocolate — so other flavours come forward; it rounds sweetness; it makes aromas seem stronger. Most savoury food tastes "seasoned" in a narrow band: soups, sauces and stews near 0.8–1.2 % salt by weight, about the concentration of salt in our blood (0.9 %).

That makes salting a matter of arithmetic: 1 % of 2 kg of soup is 20 g, about a level tablespoon and a half of fine salt. Salt in soy sauce, fish sauce, miso, stock cubes, cheese and bacon counts too. Timing changes the effect: salt in a marinade or dry brine has time to diffuse into meat and change its proteins (XVIII.4); salt added at the start of a reduction concentrates as the liquid boils away (VIII.7); salt on at the end sits on the surface and tastes stronger per gram. The workshop seasons a pot.

Below: perceived saltiness and bitterness of a dish against its salt percentage (flavour bench, teaching model), with the seasoned window marked, and the grams of salt and the salt percentage after reducing for the pot you choose.

What you will learn
Workshop
Flavour bench: saltiness and bitterness (a dish with a trace of bitterness, 0.002 % quinine-equivalent) from the course taste model with salt's suppression of bitterness. Reduction concentrates salt in proportion to the volume lost. Soy sauce about 15 % salt, fish sauce about 25 % (typical label values).

Measure, then taste

Two kilograms of soup at 1 % needs 20 g of salt, about 1.1 level tablespoons of fine salt. In this model that 1 % cuts the perceived bitterness of a faintly bitter dish by about 48 % against no salt: salt is a bitterness blocker as much as a seasoning. Reduce the soup by 30 % after salting and it is 1.43 times as salty — which is why stocks and sauces for reduction are salted at the end.

Practical rules. Season pasta water at about 1 % (10 g per litre): the pasta absorbs some and needs nothing more. Salt meat well ahead or just before cooking (VIII.2). Count salty ingredients: 30 mL of soy sauce brings about 5 g of salt. Salt in steps, tasting each time, because it cannot be taken out; if a dish is over-salted, dilute it — a potato does not "absorb" salt in any useful amount. Coarse and flaky salts differ in grams per spoon by a factor of two: weigh them (I.5).

At the stove

Make a cup of plain unsalted stock and taste it. Add salt in 0.2 % steps (0.5 g per 250 mL), tasting after each. Note where it stops tasting flat and where it starts tasting salty.

Salt was so valuable in the ancient world that the Chinese state monopoly on salt, argued over in the Discourses on Salt and Iron of 81 BCE, funded the Han dynasty's armies; the English word salary may come from the Latin for salt.

Terms

Seasoning
Adding salt (and other tastes) to bring a dish to its best.
Salt percentage
Grams of salt per 100 g of food.
Bitterness suppression
Salt reducing how bitter a food tastes.
Over-salting
Too much salt, corrected only by dilution.
Season by percentage — about 1 % for soups and sauces — count salty ingredients, and salt reductions at the end.

Sources

  1. A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.