Cornish Sea Salt Co. — Smoky Flakes

At a glance

What the label says

Quoted as printed, so the claims can be read for what they are.

• Sea salt smoked with oak, apple & cherry woods
• Made by the sea in Cornwall, England. Our Salt contains natural sea minerals derived from the unique geology surrounding the waters where it’s harvested. The combined minerals intensify the flavor, so less is needed overall for the same saltiness.
• We’ve bottled the mellow, flame-grilled taste of an open fire in every pinch of our Smoky Flakes. Two simple ingredients speak for themselves: sea salt flakes and smoke (using cherrywood, oak and applewood).
• Product is free from anti-caking agents. If contents cluster, please stir. Store in a cool dry place.
• This salt does not supply iodide, a necessary nutrient.

What we can add

The label describes the product as sea salt flakes smoked over three woods, and the ingredient list is one item long, which is the shape a genuinely smoked salt should have. The flakes are irregular and tan rather than the uniform pyramids of a Maldon, with a scatter of darker fragments that look like carried-over char. Whether the smoke came from a smokehouse or a drum the label does not say, and we do not know.

Two statements on the tub are worth reading as what they are. “Free from anti-caking agents” is a claim we can check against the ingredient list, and it holds. “The combined minerals intensify the flavor, so less is needed” is a claim about taste, and the largest comparison we know of — 45 salts, no difference in salty taste at equal sodium — does not support it as a general rule.

The sodium arithmetic

The panel declares 470 mg of sodium in a ¼ tsp serving weighing 1.4 g, which works out to about 336 mg per gram. Pure sodium chloride is 393. Allowing for the rounding the label is permitted, the true figure sits somewhere in the 320–350 band, or roughly 85% of the sodium a gram of table salt would carry.

By the arithmetic in our smoked-salt guide, a figure this far under 393 would normally send us looking for a carrier or a flavouring on the ingredient list. There is none; the panel names one ingredient. What remains is the moisture and trace mineral a flake retains, the label’s own claim that it does, and the coarse rounding of a 1.4 g serving. We cannot tell which from the package, and the package does not say.

The price

$4.99 for 50 g (1.76 oz) is $2.83 an ounce, or $45.27 a pound — $9.98 per 100 g, $99.80 a kilo. We paid retail at Woodman’s Markets in Buffalo Grove, IL, on August 22, 2026.

Tasting notes

None yet. We publish tasting notes only against a stated method — how many tasters, in what order, on what food — and we have not run that panel on this salt. When we do, they go here.