Salad

A salad is a family of dishes made from mixed ingredients, mostly vegetables, usually served chilled or at room temperature and nearly always dressed with a sauce. It matters because it appears as a starter, a main dish or a side in almost every cuisine in the world, in forms as different as the Caesar salad, the Spanish pipirrana or tabbouleh.

History

The English word salad comes from the French salade, itself an abbreviated form of the Vulgar Latin herba salata, meaning salted herb. The name points to salt: in ancient Rome vegetables were seasoned with brine or with salty dressings of oil and vinegar. Ancient Greeks and Romans already ate mixed greens with a dressing, and layered and dressed salads spread across Europe with the imperial expansion of both peoples.

In English the word appears in the fourteenth century as salad or sallet. For centuries salads depended on the seasonal garden and on whatever oils and vinegars were available locally. Oil for dressing is documented in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherland, where cargo records list a can of salad oil and a barrel of wine vinegar among goods arriving by ship.

In 1699 John Evelyn published Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets, often cited as the first book devoted to salads. In it he tried, with limited success by his own account, to persuade his fellow Britons to eat fresh leafy greens. Shakespeare, meanwhile, used the phrase salad days in 1606 to mean a time of youthful inexperience, linking the green of the leaf with immaturity.

The modern spread of salads is closely tied to migration, trade and refrigeration. The term salad bar, for a buffet of ingredients, first appeared in American English in 1937, and salads became standard in supermarkets and fast food chains. In the 2010s home consumption shifted from freshly chopped lettuce toward bagged greens and salad kits.

Culture

In Spain the salad is a common first course in everyday menus and family meals, and the ensalada mixta, with lettuce, tomato and onion, is the most familiar reference. Many variants have their own names and local roots. The Murcian salad, with tomato, onion, black olives, hard-boiled egg, tuna and red pepper, is served in a large dish in the middle of the table and often accompanied by a local red wine or beer. The pipirrana, from La Mancha, Levante and Extremadura, combines tuna or boiled egg with raw onion and green pepper. The Málaga salad mixes boiled potato, orange, desalted cod and green olives.

In Argentina the mixed salad is simply lettuce, tomato and onion, and the oil used is often corn or sunflower oil, with red wine vinegar traditionally the everyday choice. In Spain extra virgin olive oil dominates, with varieties such as hojiblanca, arbequina, cornicabra and empeltre, and picual when it is mild. White wine vinegar is common, sherry vinegar appears on special occasions, and cider, balsamic and sweet wine vinegars are increasingly used.

A saying often quoted in French cooking sums up dressing with a playful rule: be stingy with the vinegar, generous with the oil, moderate with the salt and crazy to keep tossing it. A common practical tip is to add salt first, then vinegar and finally oil, so the salt dissolves and the flavour develops. A basic vinaigrette of oil, vinegar and pepper can take pickles, onion, hard-boiled egg or herbs. Mayonnaise and its relatives, such as tartar sauce or pink sauce, are the other major dressing family.

Italy offers many local versions: a fennel and orange salad from Sicily, a Pantelleria salad with local capers, a Neapolitan seafood salad with octopus, cuttlefish, squid and prawns, and a Christmas salad from the same region made with cauliflower, anchovies and pickles. In Greece the Greek salad brings together tomato, onion, black olives, feta and oregano. In Finland rosolli, with beetroot, potato and carrot, is a traditional Christmas dish. In Bulgaria and the Balkans the shopska salad, with cheese, cucumber and tomato, is part of everyday eating.

The Caesar salad is attributed to César Cardini, who is said to have created it at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, during Prohibition in the United States. It is built from lettuce leaves and a dressing prepared at the table with egg yolk, garlic, mustard, anchovy paste and lemon, served with fried croutons and Parmesan. It now appears on many menus, often with fried bacon.

Trivia