Salpicon
A fine mince of chicken or of game, with tongue, mushrooms, truffles, and now and then foie gras. SALT tells for so much at table that it has not only a name by itself, but it reappears in the names of sauce, sausage, salmi, and salad. What would our food be without salt, sauce, sausage, salmi, and salad? Extending the Salt use of the term beyond chloride of sodium to salts in general, Bernard Palissy (translated by Henry Morley) has an eloquent passage, mixed with some considerable errors, on its importance in the economy of nature. "I tell you," he says, speaking of salts, "there is so great a number of them that it is impossible for any man to name them all; and tell you further, that there is nothing in this world which has no salt in it, whether it be in man, the beast, the trees, plants, or other vegetative things, or even in the very metals; and tell you yet more, that no vegetative things could grow without the action of salt which is in seeds; what is more, if salt were taken from the body of a man he would fall to powder in less than the winking of an eye. If the salt were separated from the stones that are in buildings, they would fall suddenly to powder. Salt bleaches everything; salt hardens everything; it preserves everything; it gives savour to everything; it is a mastic which binds everything; it collects and unites mineral matters, and of many thousand pieces makes one mass. Salt gives sound to everything: without salt no metal would yield a voice. Salt rejoices human beings; it whitens the flesh, giving beauty to reasonable creatures; it preserves friendship between the male and female by the vigour given to the sexes; it gives voice to creatures, as to metals." "The experiments of Boussingault on animals "-to quote Dr. Letheby" have shown that although salt mixed with the fodder does not much affect the quantity of flesh, fat, or milk obtained from them, yet it seriously affects their appearance and general condition; for animals deprived of salt, other than that contained naturally in the food, soon get heavy and dull in their temperament, and have a rough and staring coat. Reulin states that animals which do not find it in their food and drink become less prolific, and the breed rapidly diminishes in number. This is confirmed by Dr. Le Saine, who says in his prize essay on salt, that it Sandwich increases the fertility of the male and the fecundity of the female, and it doubles the power of nourishing the fœtus. During the period of suckling, also, salt given to the mother renders the milk more abundant and more nutritious. It likewise accelerates growth, and gives a finer condition to the skin; and the flesh of animals fed with it is better flavoured, and more easily digested than that of animals which do not partake of it. In barbarous times the most horrible of punishments, entailing certain death, was the feeding of culprits on food without salt; and in the experiments of the French Academicians, flesh deprived of its saline constituents by being washed with water lost its nutritive power, and animals fed on it soon died of starvation. There was plenty of nutritious matter in the food, but there was no medium for its solution and absorption, and hence it was useless." ....
Lastly, it would be ungrateful to forget that the chloride of sodium is all the world over the most venerated article of diet-the synonym of wit and of hospitality. The saints are the salt of the earth. It is a fact, moreover, which rests on the excellent authority of mediæval doctors, that the devil never takes any salt in his meat. They gave as a reason for this that salt is an emblem of eternity and used by the divine command in sacrifices. They seem to have overlooked the fact that to be obliged to forego salt is a terrible punishment.