method of salt formation and collection results in salt crystals that are not uniform. The salt also has a much higher amount of moisture than common salt (up to 10% compare to 0.5% for common salt), allowing the crystals to stick together in snowflake-like forms. The moisture means that fleur de sel won't dissolve right away on your tongue, so the taste lingers. Also, since it is unrefined, it is not just sodium chloride. Other minerals, like calcium, and magnesium chloride, give it a more complex flavor. These chemicals make fleur de sel taste even saltier than salt, and give it what has been described as the flavor of the sea. Trace mineral content depends upon the location at which it is harvested, so the flavor varies with point of origin. Fleur de sel is rarely the pure white of table salt. It is often pale gray or off-white from clay from the salt marsh beds. Sometimes it has a faintly pink tinge from the presence of Dunaliella salina, a type of pink microalga commonly found in salt marshes. However fleur de sel from Ria Formosa in Portugal is white. Uses Only about 5% of salt is used for cooking, but fleur de sel is used only to flavor food. It is not used in place of salt during the cooking process, instead, it is added just before serving, like a garnish, a "finishing salt," to boost the flavor of eggs, fish, meat, vegetables, chocolate, and caramel. Sources Sea salt has been gathered around the world for millennia, but over the last thousand years, fleur de sel was only harvested in France. Elsewhere it was collected and discarded. As the market for specialty salts has grown, companies have begun to harvest fleur de sel for export wherever the geographic and meteorological conditions are favorable. Europe Traditional French fleur de sel is collected off the coast of Brittany, most notably in the town of Guérande (called Fleur de Sel de Guérande), but also in Noirmoutier, and Île de Ré. Greeks have harvested sea salt and fleur de sel (ανθος αλατιού) along the Mediterranean Sea coast, particularly the Mani Peninsula of Lakonia and Missolonghi, from ancient times. Flor de sal is harvested in Portugal, mostly in the Aveiro District and in the Algarve, but also in the salt marshes of Castro Marim, at the mouth of the Guadiana River that forms the