With A Grain of Salt

Edit this sentence:

The best finishing salt in the world is from Maldon.

Correct?  No, incorrect.  It should read:

The best finishing salt in the world is from Malden.

Malden, West Virginia, not Maldon, England has the best salt in the world.  There is documentation to prove it.  In 1851 at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, J. Q. Dickinson salt was named the "Best Salt in the World," under the watchful eye of Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Samuel Colt, Lewis Carroll, Alfred Tennyson and Charlotte Brontë. It would take another thirty years before the Maldon Salt Company would produced their first bag of salt.


For over 100 years, J. Q. Dickinson produced a beautiful salt from the Iapetus Ocean, an ancient sea trapped under the Appalachian mountains about 600 million years ago. In the 1980's the J. Q. Dickinson company closed for a while until siblings and seventh-generation salt makers, Nancy Bruns and Lewis Payne revived the family business.

Now J. Q. Dickinson salt is popping up in fine dinning restaurants, trendy home shops, and on my tomatoes.  While there are many ways to use it, during these waning days of "fresh tomatoes from the garden," there is no better use that on fresh tomatoes.  Come fall... salt caramels, salted chocolate truffles, who knows.

Find out more about J. Q. Dickinson Salt Works here, including great places to buy their salt.