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Comment by emodendroket | Hacker News Reader

I'm really skeptical of the idea that one salt is at all distinguishable from another.

Pure NaCl and pure KCl are easily distinguished by taste. Salts with different mineral contents will have different taste characteristics.

But that's really more for distinguishing pink Himalayan salt from Utah salt, or similar comparisons between other salt deposits from long-gone ancient seabeds. Fresh sea salt all comes from the same ocean, and salt dried from pools on Japanese shores will taste largely the same as salt from the California coast, or from France.

But much like audiophiles, you will get people who will insist they can taste a difference, right up to the point where you do a double-blind comparison and prove that they can't.

Different salts have different trace minerals, different molecular shapes, and are ground to different textures. Why wouldn't they taste different?

Because people have done triangle tests and concluded that there's no taste difference, holding texture constant (you can tell the difference between kosher and finishing salt because the latter is flakier).

There's a good essay about this in "The Man Who Ate Everything".

If you're talking naturally occurring salt, there may be noticeable amounts of other minerals or salts besides NaCl that could affect the taste. I understand your skepticism, however.

Well, using KCl instead of NaCl is a thing. While the taste is still salty, it has a very weird aftertaste, not pleasant. I've been told it's common in Spain.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_substitute

OK, well, let's exclude "salt substitutes" from consideration; as the name suggests, that's not really what people generally mean when talking about "salt" in a culinary context.

The point of fancy salts is that they're not just NaCl -- sea salts, in particular, have a lot of other trace minerals with their own flavors (to say nothing of the texture -- generally not so important in flavoring a dish as in finishing).

The minerals themselves are completely irrelevant in taste. They're extremely trace.

Once dissolved, the salt is completely undifferentiatable. The only difference is that if sprinkled on top of food, the size/shape of the salt will change how strong the salt taste is on the tongue and how long it lasts,

Here's an example of one study which found that other minerals play a role in the salty taste perception itself, and also discusses the non-salty volatile flavors present in different sea salts: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-459X.2010....

Eh, not sure this is a great study. First, n = 9. Also, I find the abstract really obtusely written:

> [...] three sea salts had 30% less sodium compared to a reference table salt. [...] Salt solutions were evaluated on an equivalent weight and on an equivalent sodium content basis. [...] Salty taste intensity on an equivalent sodium basis was not different (P < 0.05), but time-intensity profiles for salty taste were distinct (P < 0.05).

So what they're saying is, some sea salts have extra minerals which in effect lowers the sodium content per gram. But if you compare a sea salt solution to a table salt solution with equal sodium, they taste equally as intense, but sometimes for different lengths of time. So in other words, you need more sea salt by weight to achieve the same intensity as table salt, but they didn't want to say that.

EDIT: So the time-based intensity seems to mirror what NikolaeVarius said.

And then the "Practical Implications":

> There has been some controversy that sea salt may be healthier than table salts due to the presence of other minerals. This research demonstrates that sea salts harvested from different parts of the world have different mineral content and time-intensity profiles of salty taste. Due to the different time intensity profiles, it may be possible to use less of some sea salts to obtain the same salty taste as a food containing traditional salt but having a lower sodium content.

Unfortunately, I can't read the whole article because paywall, so I can't evaluate how big the time-intensity effect is. For the "salty taste" intensity, they've shown this isn't true. And honestly, that wording wouldn't even fly on Wikipeda, "[t]here has been some controversy". Wow.

(Also interesting that the two authors are both called Drake.)

It also affects how the salt dissolves across various coarser solids and "sticky" liquids. That said, it's not hard to tell the difference in flavors of different salts in an A/B test.

At home, if it's just getting cooked into stuff, we use cheap kosher salt. If it's going on top of something, we're very picky and keep several different salts around (I'm personally fond of relatively inexpensive and widely available Maldon salt).

I'm as skeptical as OP, but if anything it's not the minerals that change the taste, it's algae and fish residue.

This passage raised my red flag:

> Harshly produced industrial salts interfere with the symbiosis of salt, air, and sun, which are part of the salt preservation process. Natural sea salts don’t overpower the base ingredient that is being preserved and allow the inherent strength of those ingredients to interact productively.

Yeah, that sounds like hocus pocus to me.

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