Fleur de sel ("Flower of salt" in French) is a hand-harvested sea salt collected by workers who scrape only the top layer of salt before it sinks to the bottom of large salt pans. Traditional French fleur de sel is collected off the coast of Brittany most notably in the towns of Guérande (Fleur de Sel de Guérande being the most revered), but also in Noirmoutier, Ile de Ré and Camargue. It is an artisanal food product. Due to its relative scarcity, fleur de sel is one of the more expensive salts.
Fleur de sel is often slightly grey due to the sand collected in the process of harvesting the salt from the pans. On occasion, the presence of Dunaliella salina (a type of pink microalgae commonly found in salt marshes) can give it a light pink tint. It is usually sold in sealed jars.
Fleurs de sel contain more mineral complexity than table salt. The following is a chemical analysis of Flos Salis, a Portuguese fleur de sel:
| Mineral | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Sodium Chloride | 94.3 - 97.6% |
| Calcium | 0.19 - 0.20% |
| Magnesium | 0.42 - 0.79% |
| Potassium | 0.22 - 0.67% |
| Iron | 8.0 - 11.1 mg/kg |
| Iodine | 0.5 - <3 mg/kg |
Parallels to authentic fleur de sel, sourced from other territories, include:
- Fleur de sel de l'Ile de Re from western France
- Flor de sal, a Portuguese variant from Aveiro.
- Pangasinan salt from Pangasinan, Philippines
- ดอกเกลือ (dork gleua) from Samut Sakorn, Thailand.
Fleurs de sel are moist salts. Flos Salis, for instance, contains from 5.4 to 8.1% residual moisture, while others can reach upwards of ten percent. Because of this, fleurs de sel do not dissolve when sprinkled on a moist food: they retain their crystal structure, giving a slight crunch to the food as well as a slight shimmer.
Due to the small size of the crystals, fleur de sel dissolves faster than regular salt when used in cooking. Hence it is best used as a finishing salt by sprinkling it over food just before serving. The crystals of fleurs de sel are irregularly sized and shaped and so dissolve at different rates in the mouth, giving several phases of salting.
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