On Food and Cooking

another, so great is the difference between
their electron hungers. Chemical compounds
held together by ionic bonds don’t simply
dissolve in water; they come apart into
separate ions, or atoms that are electrically
charged because they either carry extra
electrons or gave up some of their electrons.
(The term was coined by the pioneer of
electricity, Michael Faraday, from the Greek
word for “going,” to name those electrically
charged particles that move when an electrical
field is set up in a water solution.) Salt, our
most common seasoning, is a compound of
sodium and chlorine held together with ionic
bonds. In a solid crystal of pure salt,
positively charged sodium ions alternate with
negatively charged chloride ions, the sodiums
having lost their electrons to the chlorines.
Because several positive sodium ions are
always in a state of attraction to several
negative chloride ions, we can’t really speak
of individual molecules of salt, with one