The most frequently asked question about salt is how it works. How does it make a tomato taste more like a tomato and a steak taste more like a steak? Salt is one of the very few ingredients that's a flavorant: something that enhances flavors, not just contributes its own. Sugar and MSG are other examples of flavorants, but salt does it like nothing else. The process is complex, and still a matter of academic debate, but here are three ways salt enhances the taste of food.