salami

Long before refrigeration, salt was the quiet hero of the European pantry: rub it into meat, let time and air do their work, and dinner could wait. Latin called salt sal, and from a reconstructed Vulgar Latin form, *salamen, Italian produced salame; salami is technically its plural, although English speakers usually treat it as a singular food. The same ancient salt-word also hides in salary: Roman soldiers and officials were associated with a salarium, an allowance connected with salt or its value. Even sausage is a close cousin, descending through Latin salsus, “salted.” By 1852, English had borrowed the Italian plural—and every sandwich thereafter carried a tiny grammatical souvenir of Italy.