Status Updates From Salt: A World History

“Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese.” -Charles de Gaulle IM DEAD

“The only remaining problem is how to get the smell out of the house.” I’m fucking cryingggg

OP they’re talking about surströmming—pickled herring—which is from Sweden and Finland. These fish are fermented in barrels for TEN TO TWELVE WEEKS MY GUY

Herring are actually quite cool, especially the concept of herring lightning! “…which occurred because the shoals were so dense that they reflected light.”
“…when these fish are moving rapidly and the huge shoal turns back on itself, they resemble flashes of lightning in the churning water.”

AH the colonizers doing what they do best, stealing. “At the time of Beuckelzon’s invention, herring already had been barreled in brine by the Scandinavians, the French, the Flemish, and the English for centuries.”

Wow herring is so much different than cod: it needs to be salted twenty four hours after being lifted from the sea. This rule was so hard-stop that “…the count of Holland threatened to prosecute any fishermen who cured a herring that had been out of the water for more than twenty-four hours.”