Salt preservation could leave beef and pork tasting overwhelmingly salty by the time sailors ate them. Seasoning helped make those provisions more palatable. In this naval context, descriptions of spoiled food can become misleading when modern readers assume they always mean rotten food. The distinction here is between food that has decayed and preserved food whose flavour has become dominated by salt.
Notable Point · 20:10-21:05
Why heavily salted naval provisions needed seasoning
Seasonings could disguise the overwhelming taste of preserving salt, which should be distinguished from disguising rotten food.