These days, salts come from all over the world, in many hues and crystal forms and textures. But this blizzard is borne on a whirlwind of obfuscatory hype.

Is it true that pure salt can have other flavors beyond simple saltiness? And can less refined salts taste so much better that they might be worth a hundredfold increase in price?

At last sensory scientists have taken an interest in these questions . Their tests indicate that most salts taste pretty much the same, but no salt, even the most pure, is merely salty.

Salts come either from the oceans or from solid underground deposits of ancient seas. Both sources contain many different minerals, but the predominant one is sodium chloride. Most standard table salt is produced by injecting water into mines to dissolve the minerals, heating the brine to evaporate the water, and then handling the minerals as they precipitate . Table salt is more than 99 percent sodium chloride.

Sea salts are produced either by slow evaporation or by rapid boiling over high heat.

Both kinds of salt may be made on artisanal or industrial scales . The least refined sea salts, with the largest proportions of other minerals and moisture, are gray and clumpy.

Then there are treated salts: salts to which manufacturers add other materials to provide color or flavor. Some salts are smoked ; some are flavored with herbs and spices or wine.

Last year, scientists at North Carolina State University published a study of 38 salts in the Journal of Sensory Studies. They found that salts do indeed have different tastes, even when the solutions had the same concentration of sodium.

Less refined salts tasted less salty than table salt, but some tasted saltier. This suggests that trace minerals can either suppress or accentuate the saltiness of sodium chloride. The researchers also found that all salts, including the most refined, were slightly astringent. All had some slight umami taste, the savoriness generated by MSG.

At the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, tasters preferred chicken broth and bratwurst made with an inexpensive white sea salt over the ones made with kosher salt. Batches of those two foods made with gray sea salt, or sel gris, and fleur de sel fell in between. For fresh tomato juice, mashed potatoes and lima bean puree, the tasters had no clear favorites.

The studies suggest that it would take an unusually sensitive palate to be offended by the taste of ordinary salt, or to notice a difference in foods prepared with different salts.


By HAROLD McGEE