Image: Luca Galuzzi (Lucag), edit by Trialsanderrors · CC BY-SA 2.5
Salt: A World History
- Year
- 2002
- Era
- 21st century
- Origin
- USA · Americas
- Language
- English
- Category
- Single-subject
Salt: A World History traces the role of sodium chloride across civilizations, examining its influence on trade routes, taxation, warfare, religion, preservation techniques, and cuisine from antiquity to the modern era. Mark Kurlansky's single-subject narrative helped popularize the microhistory genre in food writing, and although a recent publication, it has already entered serious culinary collections as a touchstone of contemporary scholarship on commodity history.
Cooking from this book
Cured cod (bacalao)
Signature dishSalt cod runs through this book like a thread, surfacing again and again as Kurlansky tracks the trade routes that linked Iberian fishermen, Caribbean plantations and Mediterranean kitchens. More an idea than a single dish, it stands for the way preservation in salt reshaped diets, economies and empires. The book turned a humble preserved fish into a symbol of globalisation, which is why bacalao remains its most quietly emblematic presence.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
