The next several chapters deal with the importance of salt in Christian Europe during the middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. Sometimes Roman soldiers were paid in salt, hence "salary" and a "salad" is a collection of vegetables that is doused in a brine sauce before eating. Our words "salary" and "salad" are both derived from Latin words. They used this sauce on everything and salt became an important resource. One of the most popular Roman sauces, garum, was made from fermented fish in a brine sauce. It was the Romans though, with their fish based diet that really used salt extensively in their cuisine. The Chinese used evaporated salt to salt fish and to create a condiment that we still use, soy sauce. The Egyptians collected evaporated salt from the sea and the Nile and they used the salt in their food as well as an essential ingredient in preserving the body during mummification. The Chinese and the Egyptians were the first to use salt on a large scale. The first several chapters in the first section of the book deal with the procurement and use of salt in the ancient world. The scope of this book is epic in that it starts at the beginning of recorded world history and ends at roughly present day times. Salt is the history of the world told from the point of view of the only rock that we eat, which is salt.
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