Someone recently asked me about Fleur de Sel, the pricey French salt that one finds in swishy specialty shops.
Fleur de Sel is a bit of a sham, but it’s a nice sham. It’s basically just lumpy salt that’s been harvested the old fashioned way by people in the south of France who wear straw hats and overalls. That makes it exotic and expensive. But it is just salt, although cleaner and more nuanced in flavour than basic table salt since it isn’t iodized and hasn’t been through a big grinding mill or greasy manufacturing process.
Fleur de Sel is best used plain and raw, directly on things that are not complicated. For example, a pinch dropped onto a sliced tomato, or dashed onto simply-grilled meat or fish after it has been cooked. If you put the Fleur de Sel into a sauce, or add it to food that is still cooking, the nuanced difference from table salt will be lost, so in that case you might as well just use table salt.
By using it plain and raw you might get the nuance. Maybe. Depending on what else you’ve been eating and how sensitive your taste buds are. If you munch on a handful of briny olives after knocking back a shot of whiskey between drags of a Craven "A" then you probably won’t get it.
Another thing about Fleur de Sel is that you might find yourself using more of it than you would of table salt, because of the coarse grains. Whereas a big dose of fine-grained table salt will overwhelm a tomato slice, the same amount of Fleur de Sel will sit on top of the slice in coarse chunks. When you bite into it, you get the tomato flavor and the salt flavor quite distinctly, and they play each other up.
Finally, an important thing about Fleur de Sel is that you must not keep it a secret. Everyone at the table should be aware that you’re using it. At least half of the pleasure of using Fleur de Sel is purely imaginary — it’s when you imagine old Jacques Germain or Louis Loubet out there in the swampy shoreline of the Camargue in their overalls and straw hat, gathering the salt in the dewy morning light while white horses cavort in the tall grasses on the low rolling hills behind them.
Fleur de Sel is a lovely thing, but its charms are largely illusory.
21 thoughts on “Fleur de sel”
I’m not a big fan of having my food explained to me. My thinking is that if the folks can’t tell what it is by looking at it without it being described to them, the additional meaning/experience will be lost on them anyway.
As long as it tastes good, though, you’re ok!
Ed Bilodeau
This is like saying dépanneur wine is the same as a $30 bottle of SAQ wine.
I’m not that great at noticing minute subtleties in food, but given the choice between regular crappy IGA salt (did you know the second ingredient is sugar?) and Fleur de sel, I’ll reach for the fleur. And, since I’m really forbidden from having salt in my diet at all, I feel no guilt when using f.d.s.
Mmmm, foie gras, cornichons and fleur de sel. A little bit of heaven.
Michel
What’s the difference between Fleur de sel and sea salt?
John
I got some Fleur de Sel when I was ordering spices from Pendery’s and had room to buy something extra without paying more for shipping. It’s pretty much as Blork describes–good, but not that good. I quite like it on sugar snap peas that have been roasted in the oven with a tiny bit of olive oil.
Carl
John – as I understand it, both FdS and sea salt come from seawater, but FdS has a quainter, more rustic production technique.
Carl – try it on roasted or grilled asparagus…
jeem
Michel, I’m unconvinced that IGA salt contains sugar. And I disagree with your wine analogy — there is a huge flavour difference between all of the various wines out there, which includes quantifiable differences between dep wine and $30 SAQ wine. Salt, on the other hand, is largely just salt. If FDS were ground down so the crystals were the same size as table salt, I doubt most people would see a huge difference (slight difference, yes — huge difference, no). Some would see a big difference — those like yourself with exquisitely trained palates. ;-P
Ed, I disagree with you too. I’m all about stories, and when something has a good story behind it, it makes it that much more interesting. If I dare make an art analogy, it’s like seeing a splotch of paint on a wall. If you don’t know the story — or don’t want to know the story — you might look at it and mutter “harrumph! I could have done that!” and the story is over.
But what if someone told you it was splotched there by an ape or an elephant who is demonstrating an elementary understanding of color and the pleasure of making art? Or what if it was the last painting by Salvador Dali’s understudy, and it was intended to be proof that he had inspired most of Dali’s work but unfortunately he had a heart attack as he was starting and all he managed was this splotch?
In either case, it doesn’t make the art necessarily any “better” (whatever that means) but it sure makes it more interesting! Same thing with food. When you know the history of a dish, and what the ingredients are and how they came to be, it makes a meal more interesting on many dimensions other than just “flavour.”
John: I think “sea salt” is derived by evaporating sea water (generally in a factory setting I would think), versus cheapo salt, which is mined. FDS is sea salt that is evaporated by an old fashioned method that is slower and more labour-intensive (and hence, costlier).
Carl: you da man!
blork
Jeem!
blork
Any thoughts on that pink Himalayan salt? I’ve used it, and find it more subtle and less harsh than the stuff from a box of Sifto, but here too I might be misled by the story and the price tag.
Kate M.
Kate, I haven’t tried it. I’m sure it’s less harsh than cheapo boxed salt. Notwithstanding the claims in my post, I don’t recommend cheapo boxed salt for anything outside of sauces and pre-cooking.
I should also add that I haven’t knowingly used cheapo boxed salt in years, so perhaps it is worse than I remember. (I use inexpensive sea salt for everyday use.)
blork
Well, you see, that’s the thing; I don’t have a trained palate. Then again, since I don’t as a rule eat salt, perhaps it’s the fact that I do use fds on veggies makes me like it so much. It’s as you say, the taste is smoother, yet difficult to quantified.
As for shitfo, don’t use it anymore, not even for cooking. We’ve finally switched over to kosher salt.
Oh, and it’s called Fleur de sel because it forms on the top of sea water in thin sheets, akin to flowers. Conditions need to be just right.
Fuck, now I’m sounding like a pretensious foodie.
But? Yay, more fun to argue about food than it is to argue about politics.
Michel
Just to precise: Fleur de Sel is mainly from West of France (Guerande is famous for that). The main one sold here is from Guerande.
It’s still cheap: I think I paid 3.50$ for it last time. (same as pictured).
It’s like raw salt vs fine salt: it’s a different use, and one of its pleasures is to get a crunch of salt on the tongue. As you said: 2 pleasures at the same time.
The taste is quite different too, because, it’s not raffined and get many flavours from pollen and stuff in the air.
C'est Raoul
I think the merits of fleur de sel appear in specific situations. The tomato is a good example. But an even better example is on a simple salad – lettuce (romaine is my pref.), olive oil, wine vinegar and salt. I make this salad 3-5 times per week. If I vary the ingredients or the preparation technique, the end result varies greatly.
Salt is one of the huge factors in the result of the salad. Table salt is OK, but unremarkable, Grey salt (which I used once when I ran out of fleur de sel) is way to strong of a flavor & ruins the salad (no matter how small the dose), Sea Salt is too coarse & the flavor seperates too much from the oil, vinegar & lettuce flavors.
But fleur de sel. Oh how I love my fleur de sel on that salad. It melds perfectly with the oil & the vinegar, to bring a very unique taste. A hint of salt, but it doesn’t stick out too much. The lettuce is elevated to a more flavourful status.
True, if you had the salad with table salt or sea salt, it would taste OK…even good. But when you know what the fleur de sel salad tastes like, it’s hard to go back.
Of course, then there’s the whole prep technique….which makes a HUGE difference.
Bottom line, in specific situations, fleur de sel is a huge difference. But I agree, added to some big sauce or stew…you probably won’t taste the difference (or not much of one).
the milliner
There you go. We win. Neener neener.
Michel
Do not! We’re both saying the same thing!
:-P
blork
Re: the stories of our food being important, I agree. But telling someone, “You know, that’s “Fleur de Sel” you’re putting on your fries…”, well, it would take a special person to be able to say that without coming off as pretentious.
To feel the need to point out the cultural significance of the salt, or wine, or whatever sends a clear message: I don’t think you really appreciate what you are eating here. You don’t really get it. Sure it tastes good, but do you realize that some guy in Brittany scraped this salt up by hand! You didn’t know that? I can’t believe you didn’t know that! Everyone knows that!
Now, tell me a story about something that happened to you while you were buying the food, or cooking with it, then I’m listening. That is a story worth sharing.
Ed Bilodeau
Perhaps. Personally, I like both types of stories, and I usually don’t interpret the food stories quite the same way. Generally, I know that I don’t know everything about where all this stuff comes from, and I neither expect others to know, nor expect them to think I know. So if someone has a story about the history of the thing I’m eating, I’m all ears! Otherwise, how will I ever learn about it?
blork
Gee, I only eat salt from the salt mines of Timbuktu.
mare
Salt is salt. Chemically speaking there is almost no difference between NoName table salt and fancy sea salts from France or England. They are both around 99% NaCl.
Most mineral salts are washed away in processing (any kind of processing), leaving about 1%.
Stuff like iodine in iodized salt and the accompanying dextrose (yes, there is sugar in some salt) make up less than 0.1%.
Other additives like calcium silicate are flavourless.
What makes the difference is the texture. A course grain will give a more subtle flavour than table salt. This is most noticeable when salt is sprinkled on already prepared food or when used in cold dishes like salad.
lambic
Oh yeah, and a lot of the “sea salt” available is actually mined salt. It can be marketed as sea salt because it all came from the sea at some point.
lambic
You’re totally correct that all salt is “sea salt.” I should have mentioned that earlier.
You’re also correct that all salt is about 99% NaCl, which is why I maintain that most people won’t be able to see much difference, except, as you point out, in how texture affects the perception of flavor.
On the other hand, the makers of Fleur de Sel claim that their “open air” processing means that FDS also contains a significant amount (in their view) of atmospheric things like pollen, etc., which they claim mellows the taste.
blork
slightly off-topic, but try Japanese sea salt if you can get some–they have it at Frenco Vrac (health foods) on St-laurent in Montreal. It has a texture like wet sand, and a delicate sea-saltiness.
Also, the Malden salt (little diamond-shaped flakes) that Nigella Lawson is always on about–that’s delicious and crispy… :-)
gordon
Comments are closed.