I noticed that in your discussions of salted water in cooking, you never mentioned the main reason why people add salt to water: it raises the boiling temperature of the water so that foods cook faster — L
You are right that adding salt to water raises the water’s boiling temperature. Contrary to one’s intuition, adding salt to water doesn’t make it easier for the water to boil, it makes it harder. As a result, the water must reach a higher temperature before it begins to boil. Any foods you place in this boiling salt water (e.g. eggs or pasta) find themselves in contact with somewhat hotter water and should cook faster as a result. That’s because most cooking is limited by the boiling temperature of water in or around food and anything that lowers this boiling temperature, such as high altitude, slows most cooking while anything that raises the boiling temperature of water, such as salt or the use of a pressure cooker, speeds most cooking. However, it takes so much salt to raise the boiling temperature of water enough to affect cooking times that this can’t be the main motivation for cooking in salted water. By the time you’ve salted the water enough to raise its boiling temperature more than a few degrees, you’ve made the water too salty for cooking. It’s pretty clear that salting your cooking water is basically a matter of taste, not temperature.