On Food and Cooking

chloride ions. These atoms are smaller and
more mobile than any molecule, and therefore
readily penetrate our foods, where they react
in useful ways with proteins and with plant
cell walls. And because a concentrated
solution of any kind draws water out of living
cells by osmosis — water in the less
concentrated cell fluid moves out of the cell
to relieve the imbalance — the presence of
sufficient salt in a food discourages the
growth of spoilage bacteria while allowing
harmless flavor-producing (and salt-tolerant)
bacteria to grow. It thus preserves the food
and improves it at the same time.
Salt is a remarkable ingredient. No wonder
that people from earliest times have found it
indispensable, that it’s embedded in everyday
words and sayings (salary, from the Roman
practice of paying soldiers in salt; worth his
salt; salt of the earth), and that it has been the
occasion for governmental monopolies and
taxes and popular revolts against them, from