“You’re the cream in my coffee.
You’re the salt in my stew.
You will always be my necessity.
I’d be lost without you.” 

February arrives with all its symbols of love: romantic songs, roses, chocolates, candle-lit dinners for two.  But beyond the surface symbolism, what makes love enduring, a true partnership, real? 

If love were an ingredient, it wouldn’t be sugar. It would be salt. As the old jazz song has it, it’s the necessity we can’t live without. 

SALT, THE PERFECT PARTNER 

When salt does what it should (in the chemistry of your body and with food) you’re happy in the harmony it brings and barely notice it -  but if it’s not there, you feel its absence immediately!  Perhaps that’s why salt feels like a more authentic metaphor for a long-term love partnership. 

We love salt Instinctively. Humans crave it because we need sodium and the natural trace minerals that combine with it.  It’s essential. But have you noticed that when we’re craving salt, we don’t gulp down a spoonful straight from the salt grinder. Instead, we imagine a sprinkle on roasted cashews, a dash on crisply baked fries, or the umami rapture of freshly buttered marmite toast.  What we crave is how salt partners with food — how it transforms and reveals the true flavour of what we’re eating.

SALT’S QUIET SUPER-POWERS 

Salt as a companion is chemistry in action. It transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary: for instance, it reduces bitterness. Salt doesn’t erase bitterness, it softens its sharp edges.  A pinch of salt can take radicchio from harsh to heavenly, mellow the bitterness of broccoli, or coax the subtle sweetness from grapefruit.   

Salt intensifies sweetness. A tiny pinch makes fruit taste riper, desserts more alive. It’s why salted caramel works so beautifully — contrast creates depth and amplifies what’s already present.

And let’s not forget its role in the kitchen’s most tactile love stories. Salt transforms bread dough, directing yeast fermentation and shaping the crumb. In steak, timing when you add salt determines juiciness and depth of flavour. 

Salt preserves. For millennia, humans have used it to cure, pickle, and ferment, from sauerkraut and brined olives to cured meats. Just like a strong and steady love endures over time.

SALT, THE SOULMATE OF FOOD 

There’s something poetic, too, about the history of great pairings with salt.  Think salt and chocolate.  Historically, salt was considered so rare and valuable, it was traded and functioned as currency. It’s where the word salary comes from.  In Mesoamerica, long before Spanish colonisation,  cacao beans too were traded as precious currency. 

Today, these treasured substances paired together are a successful marriage of flavours.  Salt both enhances and contrasts the sweetness of chocolate; it complements and elevates the taste, without stealing the limelight. 

Salt’s perfect pairing extends beyond sweetness. It has found its iconic match with pepper, a partnership that traces back to the courts of Louis XIV, when French royalty allowed only salt, pepper, and parsley at their tables. Pepper may bring spice, but salt brings balance, control, and the subtle art of enhancement. Together, they form a culinary marriage that has lasted centuries—a love story we still celebrate today on every dining room table. 

That’s the kind of enduring love worth celebrating on Valentine’s Day. 

The alluring seductive confectionary of sentimental love doesn’t have staying power. True love is stable, balanced and lasts.  Good, steady, reliable, helpful people are not called salt-of-the-earth for nothing.

We need salt.

And we need each other.