National Geographic - Sea salt: excellent product of nature and the secret - Documentary
Channel: beficompta
Date: 2018-01-25

National Geographic - Sea salt: excellent product of nature and the secret - Documentary
Sea salt is mentioned in the Vinaya Pitaka, a Buddhist scripture compiled in the mid-5th century BC. The principle of production is evaporation of the water from the sea brine. In warm and dry climates this may be accomplished entirely by using solar energy, but in other climates fuel sources have been used. Modern sea salt production is almost entirely found in Mediterranean and other warm, dry climates.


"Fleur de sel" sea salt, Île de Ré
Such places are today called salt works, instead of the older English word saltern. An ancient or medieval saltern was established where there was:

Access to a market for the salt
A gently shelving coast, protected from exposure to the open sea
An inexpensive and easily worked fuel supply, or preferably the sun
Another trade, such as pastoral farming or tanning—which benefited from proximity to the saltern (by producing leather, salted meat, etc.) and provided the saltern with a local market
In this way, salt marsh, pasture (salting), and salt works (saltern) enhanced each other economically. This was the pattern during the Roman and medieval periods around The Wash, in eastern England. There, the tide brought the brine, the extensive saltings provided the pasture, the fens and moors provided the peat fuel, and the sun sometimes shone.


Manual salt collection in Lake Retba, Senegal

Salt deposits on the shores of Dead Sea, Jordan
The dilute brine of the sea was largely evaporated by the sun. In Roman areas, this was done using ceramic containers known as briquetage. Workers scraped up the concentrated salt and mud slurry and washed it with clean sea water to settle impurities out of the now concentrated brine. They poured the brine into shallow pans (lightly baked from local marine clay) and set them on fist-sized clay pillars over a peat fire for final evaporation. Then they scraped out the dried salt and sold it. In rural areas of Sichuan, China, these traditional salt production methods lasted until industrialization in the 20th century.

Today, salt labelled "sea salt" in the US might not have actually come from the sea, as long as it meets the FDA's purity requirements.