Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

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Salt does other things to food besides alter taste and preserve.

"Salt is special. See, rather than simply flavoring meat by working itself in between muscle fibers, it actually alters the structure of meat, primarily by causing certain parts of the protein myosin to become dissolvable in water.

What does this accomplish? Well, by dissolving myosin, muscle structure is greatly loosened, allowing it to retain more moisture (this is the principle behind brining), and more importantly in this case, it allows proteins between muscle groups to cross-link, causing them to stick to each other.

This is why, for instance, sausages get a nice bouncy, snappy texture, and why if you remove the salt from one, it becomes crumbly and dry (see here for more info on salting and making sausages, and here for some deeper scientific info on the process of salting meat. http://qpc.adm.slu.se/Low_salt_pig-meat_products/page_23.htm...

https://www.seriouseats.com/2013/05/food-lab-tacos-al-pastor... (and a variant I like even more https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/02/how-to-make-mexican-pueb...)

The same idea works with steak, but you need to be careful if you are anywhere between immediately salting the steak, and less than an hour. (scroll to the Salt section) https://www.seriouseats.com/2011/03/the-food-lab-more-tips-f...

I highly recommend Samin Nosrat's "Salt Fat Acid Heat" if you are interested in the fundamental basics of cooking like salt.

> This beautiful, approachable book not only teaches you how to cook, but captures how it should feel to cook

> "Just reading Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will make you a better cook, adept at seasoning, balancing..."

https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/523923/

> if you remove the salt from one, it becomes crumbly and dry

If you remove the salt it is not a sausage. The word sausage comes from Latin salsus meaning "salted". Salad and sauce also come from this root (more obviously in the Spanish salsa).

If you showed a tube of ground meat to some people and asked if it looked like a sausage, most would agree it does without insisting that you check to see if it has salt. While you're right about the word's etymological history[1], there is nothing that prevents words from obtaining new meanings that might seem like they're at odds with their etymological histories. A good example of this: nice[2].

[1]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/sausage

[2]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/nice

I don't know anybody who would call this a sausage: https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/Kirkland-Signature-Le...

Would anybody call it a sausage if there were salt in it? I'm inclined to say no. Obviously there's a lot more that goes into sausage-ness than being a tube of meat.

Yeah, because it doesn't look like a sausage. The shape of it being a tube of meat is what people call a sausage.

The poster youre replying to doesn't say "ground beef" = " sausage" so I don't see your point.

But this ground beef literally comes in tubes. Look at the second picture.

Conversely, that tube of meat wouldn't become a sausage simply because you put salt on it. There's obviously a lot of nuance involved.

So are you actually claiming that ground meat is sausage or that anyone would think it's a sausage upon cooking and tasting it, regardless of how it looks?

Regardless of how people actually do turn out to use the word sausage, my point is (1) that you could imagine alternate histories in which any combination of those meanings could be attached to the word "sausage" (2) there is no principled way to insist that one of these combinations is the "correct" one.

No, I can't imagine any other version of history because salt is the entire point of sausage. Prior to refrigeration it was the only way to preserve meat. Grinding meat might have been done if it was to be eaten immediately but otherwise it would be a waste.

Smoking was a way to preserve meat other than salting it that existed long before refrigeration.

They specifically say tube. That the shape makes it a sausage, not the salt content.

No it doesn't. You might think it does but you've never made a sausage. The tube shape comes from the natural casing used. But you can make sausage into any shape you want and it's still sausage.

Etymology doesn't dictate use, it only influences it.

People will still call unsalted sausages (e.g. for people that must follow a salt-free diet ) sausages, even if 2000+ years ago salsus meant "salted" for a totally different nation of people.

Heck, even vegan products are called sausages, without having any meat even.

Yeah, great point (though also interested to learn about the etymology).

I was thinking about these veg*n meatless variants (not limited to sausages). Often they're called "vegetarian X" or "vegan X" or a nameplay/wordplay on the word such as in Dutch "visvrije tonijn" (fish-free tuna) or gehacktballen (minced meat balls, but then with a 'c' added making the word 'hack').

Salary is another word that has its roots in salt. It harkens back to Ancient Rome, when soldiers got paid in salt.

The roman soldiers did not actually get paid in salt, or if they did, it was more like a ration, not their actual pay.

People say this all the time, and its patently wrong - salt was not a rare resource in italy, the sea is everywhere.

> salt was not a rare resource in italy, the sea is everywhere

If I recall correctly, the book from the article mentions that the sea is an inefficient way to gather salt. The salinity is just much lower than what you can find in underground brine springs. It also goes into how Italian city-states went to war over control of saltworks, and how it hugely increased the wealth of whoever controlled it. So although it may not have been rare, I don't think it's accurate to paint it as an abundant resource, either.

Interesting about the misinformation around the etymology of "salary." Thanks for pointing out. Found an article [1] that goes into more depth about how there's no evidence for the explanation.

[1]: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.ht...

I should have remembered the bit about the saltworks though, good point.

I agree it would be surprising if they were paid in salt, but the OED says

Latin salārium, originally money allowed to Roman soldiers for the purchase of salt, hence, their pay

It takes a lot of effort to turn sea water into salt.

You get 4.5 ounces of salt from a gallon of water and it takes a fairly long time or a lot of fuel for 1 gallon of water to evaporate.

Which is why the best regions for making sea salt are areas where the sea water is naturally concentrated due to geography that traps it and lets the sun do a lot of the work.

GP was saying _if_ you removed the salt from what was previously a sausage, it would crumble.

I think most people would consider any ground meat in a smallish cylinder shape to be "sausage", especially if wrapped in a natural or synthetic sheath.

Salt might be what makes a "good" sausage?

> ... Latin salsus meaning "salted". Salad and sauce also come from this root

... so if you remove the salt, it's not a salad or a sauce? Hmm.

I don't think so. If you remove salt or sauce from salad then it's just cut up vegetables. And a sauce without salt won't be very popular too say the least.

So the bowl of vegetables is not the salad, but the runny stuff in the bottle is?

And so much for applesauce. sigh

I guess that's no true sauce, man.

In French it's called compote de pommes which I would say is correct. It's a compote, not a sauce.

The runny stuff is a sauce. Salad really just means adding salt to it. In Italy they don't use a sauce as such, but rather just add oil, vinegar and salt separately.

But I get what you're doing. You're taking the extreme approach of "etymology never matters". I get it. I'm able to enjoy the etymology of words and the difference between a sauce and a compote and still say "apple sauce" when I'm talking to English speakers.

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