Sea salt, obtained by the evaporation of seawater, is used in cooking and cosmetics. Historically called bay salt, its mineral content gives it a different taste from table salt, which is pure sodium chloride, usually refined from mined rock salt (halite) or from sea salt. Areas that produce specialized sea salt include the Cayman Islands, Greece, France, Ireland, Colombia, Sicily, Apulia in Italy, Maldon in Essex UK, and Hawaii, Maine, Utah, the San Francisco Bay, and Cape Cod in the United States. Generally more expensive than table salt, it is commonly used in gourmet cooking and specialty potato chips, particularly the kettle cooked variety.
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Sea salt, obtained by the evaporation of seawater, is used in cooking and cosmetics. Historically called bay salt, its mineral content gives it a different taste from table salt, which is pure sodium chloride, usually refined from mined rock salt (halite) or from sea salt. Areas that produce specialized sea salt include the Cayman Islands, Greece, France, Ireland, Colombia, Sicily, Apulia in Italy, Maldon in Essex UK, and Hawaii, Maine, Utah, the San Francisco Bay, and Cape Cod in the United States. Generally more expensive than table salt, it is commonly used in gourmet cooking and specialty potato chips, particularly the kettle cooked variety.
Where mineral salt has been readily obtainable it has long been mined. The salt mines of Hallstatt go back at least to the Iron Age. However, it has not been readily obtainable everywhere and the alternative coastal source has also been exploited for thousands of years. The principle of the production is the evaporation of the water from the brine of the sea. In warm and dry climates this may be done entirely by solar energy, but in other climates fuel must be used. For this reason, sea salt production is now almost entirely an industry of Mediterranean and other warm, dry climates.
- Access to a market for the salt.
- A gently-shelving coast, protected from exposure to the open sea.
- A cheap and easily worked fuel supply; preferably, the sun.
- Preferably, another trade such as pastoral farming and tanning so that it and the salt could each add value to the other in the form of leather or salted meat.
In this way, salt marsh, pasture (salting), and salt works (saltern) enhanced each other economically. This was the economic pattern in the Roman and Medieval periods around The Wash, in eastern England. There, the tide brought the brine, the extensive saltings provided the pasture, the fens and moors provided the peat fuel, and the sun sometimes shone.
Taste and health
Because sea salt generally lacks high concentrations of iodine, an element essential for human health, it is not necessarily a healthful substitute for regular iodized table salt, which is usually supplemented with the element, unless another source of dietary iodine is available (such as dairy products or regular processed foods). Iodized forms of sea salt are now marketed to address this concern. However, unrefined sea salt contains many minerals that regular iodized table salt does not contain, such as magnesium, sulfate, calcium, and potassium.
