Salt and Civilization

Salt represents the civilized: it requires know-how to get it, and a sophisticated combination of cooking and spoilt, jaded appetites to need it. Its sharp taste suggests sharpness of intellect and liveliness of mind. Salt (bright, dry, titillating, and dynamic) is synonymous in several languages with wit and wisdom.

Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner - the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos of an ordinary meal, 76.