Thank you for downloading from the BBC. The details of our complete range of

podcasts and our terms of use go to bbcworldservice.com slash podcasts I'm in a

chippy eating one of my favourite things a bag of chips with loads of salt on

top in fact as far as I'm concerned you can't eat chips without salt on

going past me a couple of minutes ago as well as a salt gritter on your mind

think that as far as you can go with salt there isn't much more to say about it

but actually there's a lot of different things it's part of take language for

example where would we be without salt well I tell you what you certainly

wouldn't be earning a salary for a start the Roman army the army of the Roman

empire was paid in salt and that is the origin of a number of words actually

including salary and soldier see this is Mark Kalansky author of Salt a

world history salt is what you want to look for a S.A.L. yeah it's the origin of

the word salacious for example in my salt book I have an old French engraving of

French housewives salting their husbands past their ears in the hopes of

getting a better performance but also the fact that it preserves has the idea

that it keeps off rot and therefore drives away evil the Romans put salt into

every single one of their sources and called them salsa the old French dropped

the L and made this sauce and if we salute Mark Forsyth's book the etymologican

for its list of salt linguistic legacy then our salute comes from the same

Latin beat Salas as salt they did the same with the Roman salsikas or salted

meat that turned into sausages and then into sausages and illusions and

Spanish kept the al and still make salami which they can dip into salsa and

...