Put Salt in Your Coffee Maker Immediately.

In these difficult economic times (blah blah blah) I've been attempting to go cheaper and cheaper with my morning coffee...When I was working at Dean & Deluca, I could acquire relatively good coffee at a discount (5-finger or otherwise), but now I've been forced to pretend that Folgers is what yanks my crank.  I decided last week that this-"The Folgers Trials"as I have deemed it, not so unlike "The Nuremburg Trials"-would require more than a pinch of ingenuity and maybe even some organic chemistry.

I began with Hervé This's book Molecular Gastronomy, and was particularly fascinated by chapter 24, "How Salt Affects Taste".  Mr. Man discusses therein the recent and peculiar discovery that salt can be more effective than sugar at masking bitterness.  Well I'll be damned.  So Monsieur goes on to describe an experiment in which scientists compared three separate aqueous solutions, one containing bitter urea, one with sucrose (aka table sugar) and one with sodium acetate.  He continues:

There were reasons for choosing these three: Sucrose added to urea softens its bitterness, and sodium acetate contributes sodium ions without imparting too salty a taste.  Ten subjects were asked to evalate the intensity of bitter, sweet and other sapid sensations produced by combinations of urea, sugar and salt in different concentrations (three for urea and salt, four for sugar).  As predicted, sodium acetate reduced the bitterness of urea.  What gastronomic empiricism did not predict however was that salt masked the bitterness much more effectively than sugar.

This is a pretty revolutionary discovery in my eyes, but I feel like it's something that grandmas and moms and other cooking geniuses have known forever and I'm the last to catch on.  Hervé continues:

Moreover, in strong sugar concentrations, the sweet character was increased by the addition of sodium acetate, probably because salt offsets the weakening of the sweet intensity caused by the bitterness of urea.  Consistent with the hypothesis , the addition of sodium acetate by itself to sugar, in the absence of urea, did not increase the intensity of the sweet  taste.  

After reading this, naturally I was beside myself with excitement to use this new knowledge to improve my cheap-ass coffee.  The next morning I practically leapt out of bed and flew to my drip coffee maker.

After spooning my standard 5 heaping TBs of coffee in the filter for an 8-cup pot, I spooned one half teaspoon of the only salt I had (very fine Japanese sea salt, also from Dean & Deluca oddly enough) over the top of the grounds, trying to cover as much surface area as possible.  Pushing the "on" button was nearly more than I could bear.  I tried to be patient with the drips, but enough about my social life...

I poured myself a cup and drank it black for full objectivity.  Hervé wasn't kidding!  It was a new substance altogether.  I knew it was only the salt tricking my brain but I was loving every minute of it.  The bitterness of standard coffee to which we've all grown begrudgingly accustomed had vanished like someone turning down the stereo.  What I tasted as I drank was...well, for lack of a better term, pure chocolate.  It was nearly overpoweringly chocolatey, until the nuttiness from what I assumed to be the roasting process came through.  It was as if the salt grains were the judges of a talent show eliminating all the bad singers and two-bit magicians until only the stars were left onstage...I added a bit of milk and a couple of splenda packets and it became like a dessert thanks to the Elizabeth Taylor lens that is salt.  Folgers.  Yes!

PLEASE try this at home and comment on this post about your results.  I've added salt to the filter each morning for the last 3 mornings with similar success, but I want to hear how it works with other coffees and types of salt.