What makes fleur de sel different from regular salt?

Question

Fleur de sel is the salt from the top of the pot when you heat salted water.

But what makes it different from the rest of the salt in the pot?

Answer 1

1. It is harvested manually
2. It is a small portion of the evaporated sea-salt produced.
3. It is a lot more expensive
4. It has finer salt-flakes as normal evaporated sea salt.

Unless you can distinguish it from other salts in a double blind randomized controlled trial I do not think that it is worth the trouble. Setting a trail up with a few friends is a lot of fun :)

Answer 2

I'm not 100% sure but I found this site that explains what fleur de sel is. It says that

Like other sea salts, fleur de sel is harvested by evaporating sea water. However, to harvest fleur de sel, workers gently skim the top layer of the sea salt from partially evaporated pools, before it sinks to the bottom again. These salt crystals are very fine, light, and delicate, and must be handled with care and exposed to minimal moisture, or they will clump again.

It looks like you are reproducing how fleur de sel is made, through boiling the water which is the equivalent to "evaporating sea water".

Answer 3

AFAIK, the mineral content of the salt is the major difference. Also, the smaller crystals of Fleur de sel dissolve very quickly.