At Khewra in the Punjab the salt mine runs more than forty kilometres of tunnel on nineteen levels. The first records of mining are from the Janjua, in the 1200s. The story goes that Alexander's horses found it, licking the stones. Under the Mughals the salt reached markets as far as Central Asia; the Sikhs held the mine when that empire fell, and the British took it from them and rebuilt the tunnels in 1872.
The other salt is Atlantic. On the Guerande peninsula in Brittany, where the pans were first written of in 854, paludiers rake grey salt off clay floors, and the clay is the grey. It keeps about thirteen per cent of its water, so it never quite dries and gives bursts of salt.
Pepper is simpler than the jars suggest. Black, white and green come off one vine: black is the unripe fruit dried, white the ripe fruit soaked about a week until the flesh rots off, green the unripe fruit kept green. Pink is not pepper at all. It is Schinus, a cashew relative from Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, sweet and barely hot, sold as a peppercorn because it looks like one.
Mesquite is a ranching accident. Cattle herds spread its seed across Texas, and when grilling over the wood caught on, one Dallas mesquite dealer went from about a thousand customers in 1979 to more than twelve thousand in 1984.
Sea Salt, Coarse is the plain first layer. Himalayan Sea Salt, Coarse is the pink rock of that range, and Grey Sea Salt, Coarse the damp pinch at the end. Butcher's Cracked Black Peppercorns is cracked coarse enough to hold a crust, Peppercorns, Pink the sweet red ones scattered for colour, and St. Laurent Steak Spice Blend the smoked-meat rub of Boulevard Saint-Laurent. Mesquite Blend and Hickory Smoked Sea Salt stand in for a smoker; Argentinian Chimichurri Blend is the herb sauce, kept dry.
