You can use these for effect in a similar way to your French text.

The incomparable flavour of a now continuous flow of water is, no pun intended, the salt of the earth.

It's a bit weird isn't it, because even though the text says "sans jeu de mot", it obviously is going out of its way to do just that!

I think it should be "sans pareille" instead of "sans pareil" in the original text. It goes with "saveur" which is feminine.

There is also "with a grain of salt" and "with a pinch of salt" but the tend to "take away" from the story, so will be harder to use.

Good luck!

Just could use this in some way to continue in the descriptive laudatory vein, though obviously it is related to health and not directly to salt, or salubrious, again from salus - health, but sufficiently near to salt to evoke it.

Hello,

There's not play on words here (sans jeux de mots)

I think that "histoire" = matter
saveur = flavor (more like "quality" here)

Because there is salt in the water from the ocean, we always know that will never run out of water to desalinate (there will always water availalbe). Salt = forever water to drink (ironic, considering we can't drink saltwater)

I hope this helps.

le piquant de l'histoire