salt (something) down

(redirected from salted down)

salt (something) down

To cover something in salt to dry it. I wouldn't drive on the roads until they've had a chance to salt them down—they're pretty slick at the moment! We salt down the freshest meat and let it dry cure for at least 72 hours.

salt something down

to place salt on something, such as icy roads. I won't go out until midmorning, after they have salted the roads down. I hope they salt down the roads soon.

salt down

To cover something completely in salt in order to preserve it, flavor it, or dry it: The cook salted the eggplant down for four days. Pioneers would salt down meat for the winter.

See also: down, salt

References in classic literature ?

I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

View in context

In a mixed agricultural metaphor, he concludes that Gertrude must be salted down until the yoke (of matrimony) can be hung upon her.

Because of her impatience to satisfy her sexual desires, he states that she must be salted down in order to relieve her of her 'night-hunger' (nachthunger).

The second speaker of our third play, A Salting Down for Carnival, asserts that there is no need for the landlord to flavour the men's soup with lard since he and his companions will soon have their own supply of tasty maidens salted down for them in a tub (ll 7-12).

The Salting Down of Gertrude: Transgression and Preservation in Three Early German Carnival Plays

Since the last mine closed in 1930, it has become a favourite with tourists who come to find out more about its rich history and local legends including the story of the "salted down corpse" - according to folklore, when a previous landlady's father died, the weather was too bad to take him into Tavistock to be buried, so she packed him in salt in a trunk in one of the guest rooms.

Is your local Only Ordinary By Name? We've teamed up with John Smith's to find Britain's most extraordinary pub - so if your local fits the bill then nominate it now!

It was crystallized on the front page of The Wall Street Journal of August 21, 2000 when an alleged massacre near the present city of Hobart nearly two centuries ago was described as "the opening shot in a war that would result in the near-extermination of Tasmanian Aborigines." The report adds that some of "the 50 or so killed that day were salted down and sent to Sydney as anthropological curiosities." It is a chilling story.