system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: In cooking what does a pinch of salt actually do?

Things like pancakes - does such a small amount of salt change anything chemically to make the recipe?
gpt
For the overwhelming majority of human evolution sodium has only been available at trace element levels (Seriously, look into some of the historical examples of Hueculean efforts that went into trying to extract salt from natural environments) but our nervous system needs it for neurons and nerves to function properly. Because of this, human taste buds are designed to be very very sensitive to salt and if we detect some in food our tongue hammers on the signal button that says "Holy shit there's salt in this eat more of it put it in your face!" Or, simply put, makes it taste good.

Salt also dissolves so a little bit will more or less evenly distribute in a liquid (like pancake barter) so adding just a tiny amount of salt will make the entire batch taste much better.