You might not taste it, but salad is always
salty. “Salad” comes from the Vulgar Latin word salāta, meaning
“having been salted.” The name may seem like a strange choice for a dish of
leafy greens, but it most likely
refers not to the salad components but to the
highly seasoned dressings that often accompany them.
Unlike “salad,” this is one salty name that
readily makes sense. Salt is a key ingredient in the making of sausage—both the
food and the word. “Sausage” comes from the Late Latin word salsīcius,
meaning “prepared by salting,” which it quite literally is.
But the salt-sausage link doesn’t end there.
“Salumi,” the general name for several kinds of cured Italian meats (such as
prosciutto), is also based on the Latin word for “salt.”
And one specific variety of salumi also owes its
name to “salt”: salami. The word “salami” has its roots in the Latin term salāre,
meaning “to salt.”
Chefs are taught to add salt to their sauces a
little at a time to avoid adding too much, but what happens when the sauce is
made from salt? Because, etymologically, it is. “Sauce” comes from the Vulgar
Latin word salsa, which is ultimately derived from a word meaning
“salt.”
That Vulgar Latin salsa is also
the root of the salsa into which we dip our salty chips. Fittingly, salsa means
“sauce” in Spanish. And now we’re hungry.