Here’s the Cure for the Common Egg. (Or Lemon. Or Tomato.)

Salt-curing is a practice so old that historians and anthropologists still argue over when and where it began. Some believe Neanderthals may have salted meat as a means of preservation, others trace modern salt-curing to the deserts of Asia, and still others say it developed independently in multiple locations. Salt-cured meats have even been found in Egyptian tombs, stashed away as a treat to feed the pharaohs and nobility in the afterlife (the pharaohs themselves having been...