Salt and Sugar
Don’t abandon everything you know about salt when you turn to making dessert. We’re taught to think of salt and sugar existing in contrast to, rather than in concert with, one another: food is either sweet or savoury. But remember that the primary effect salt has on food is to enhance flavour, and even sweets benefit from this boost. Just as a little sweetness can amplify flavours in a savoury dish—whether in the form of caramelised onions, balsamic vinaigrette, or a spoonful of applesauce served with pork chops—salt will also improve a sweet dessert. To experience what salt does for sweets, divide your next batch of cookie dough and omit salt from half. Taste cookies from both batches side by side. Because salt will have done its aroma- and taste-enhancing work, you’ll be astounded by the notes of nuttiness, caramel, and butter you detect in the salted cookies.
The foundational ingredients of sweets are some of the blandest in the kitchen. Just as you’d never leave flour, butter, eggs, or cream unseasoned in a savoury dish, so should you never leave them unseasoned in a dessert. Usually just a pinch or two of salt whisked into a dough, batter, or base is enough to elevate flavours in pie and cookie doughs, cake batters, tart fillings, and custards alike.
Considering how you plan to eat a dessert can help you decide which type, or types, of salt to use. For example, use fine salt that will dissolve evenly in chocolate cookie dough, and then top it with a flakier one such as Maldon for a pleasant crunch.
Layering Salt
From capers to bacon to miso paste to cheese, there are many sources of salt beyond the crystals we add directly into our food. Working more than one form of salt into a dish is what I call layering salt, and it’s a terrific way to build flavour.
When layering salt, think about the dish as a whole and consider all of the various forms of salt you hope to add before you begin. Neglecting to account for the later addition of a crucial salty ingredient could result in oversalting. Think of layering salt the next time you make Caesar Dressing, which has several salty ingredients—anchovies, Parmesan, Worcestershire sauce, and salt. Garlic, which I like to pound with a pinch of salt in a mortar and pestle into a smooth paste, is a fifth source of salt. Since making a delicious, balanced dressing depends on working in the right amounts of each of those—and other, unsalted—ingredients, refrain from adding salt crystals until you’re sure that you’ve added the right amount of everything else.
First, make a stiff, unsalted mayonnaise by whisking oil into egg yolks, drop by drop (find more specific instructions for making mayonnaise by hand here–here). Next, work in initial amounts of pounded anchovies, garlic, grated cheese, and Worcestershire. Then, add vinegar and lemon. Taste. It will need salt. But does it also need more anchovy, cheese, garlic, or Worcestershire? If so, add salt in the form of any of those ingredients. But do it gradually, stopping to taste and adjust with acid as needed. It may take several rounds of tasting and adjusting to get it right. As with any dish with multiple forms of salt, add crystals only after you’re satisfied with the balance of all other flavours. And to be sure you’ve got it right, dip a lettuce leaf or two into the finished dressing to taste, to ensure that the combination delivers the zing! you’re after.
Even when following a recipe, if you realise that a dish needs more salt, take a moment to think about where that salt should come from.
Balancing Salt
No matter how attentive you are while cooking, there will be times you sit down to eat only to discover that you’ve underseasoned your dinner. Some foods forgive undersalting more readily than others. You can easily adjust a salad at the table with a pinch of salt. Stir a shaving of salty Parmesan into a cup of soup to bump up its seasoning. Other foods don’t respond as well: no amount of salty sauce or cheese or meat could ever make up for bland pasta—the tongue will always know the water was nowhere nearly as salty as the sea. Roasted and braised meats cannot pardon the transgression of underseasoning, either.
Ever since witnessing a series of underseasoning disasters at Chez Panisse, I’ve been obsessed with preventing it. There was the day a cook forgot to add salt to the pizza dough altogether, an accident we didn’t notice until the taster, when nothing could be done but remove pizza from the menu. There was the time I braised chicken legs that had been marked “salted” but clearly were not, a mistake that went undiscovered until I pulled the chicken from the oven and tasted it. Since sprinkling the surface of cooked meat will do little to make up for the lack of seasoning within, the only thing we could do was shred the meat, season it, and turn it into a ragù to be served with pasta. The instance of underseasoning that made the biggest impression on me, though, was the time a very senior cook undersalted his lasagna, which he had already cut into one hundred pieces for that night’s service. Since salting the top would do little to correct a mistake that had been made from within, as the intern I was given the task of gingerly lifting each of the twelve layers on each of the one hundred pieces of lasagna to sneak a few grains of salt into each one. After that, I’ve never underseasoned a lasagna.
You will also inevitably oversalt. We all do. It might happen soon after you become a member of the newly converted, now awakened to the power of salt. You might grow cavalier, like I did as a young cook with those pork roasts, and start to use so much salt, you render everything inedible for a while. It could happen when you’re simply not paying attention. It’s not that big a deal. We all make mistakes from time to time. I certainly still do.
There are a handful of fixes for oversalting. But none involves serving something terribly salty alongside something terribly bland. Intentional blandness won’t ever cancel out oversalting.
Dilute
Add more unseasoned ingredients to increase the total volume of the dish. More of anything that’s unsalted will work to balance out what’s salted, but bland, starchy, and rich things are particularly helpful in these circumstances, because just a small amount of them can help balance out a relatively large amount of food. Add bland rice or potatoes to an overseasoned soup, or olive oil to an oversalted mayonnaise. While water evaporates from a boiling soup, stock, or sauce, salt won’t, and what’s left behind will be overly salty. The solution here is simple: add more water or stock. If you overseason a dish made with many ingredients mixed together, add more of the main ingredient and adjust everything else until it’s all balanced again.
Halve
If you’ve already put the dish together and diluting will yield more food than you’ll be able to use, then divide the oversalted amount and correct only half of it. Depending on what it is, you may be able to refrigerate or freeze the rest until you can get around to adjusting and using it. Or, you might have to face the sad reality of throwing it out. But that’s better than using thirty dollars’ worth of olive oil to correct a batch of mayonnaise, and then only using a quarter of it.
Balance
Sometimes, food that seems salty isn’t actually oversalted; it just needs to be balanced with some acid or fat. Doctor up a spoonful of the dish with a few drops of lemon juice or vinegar, a little olive oil, or some of each. If it tastes better, then apply the changes to the whole batch.
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