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The word
"salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning,
from the Latin salata, "salty", from sal, "salt".
In the Middle
Ages, after a long winter of salted meats and pickled vegetables,
people would be "salt-sick" and starving for spring greens.
A pregnant wife's yearning for rapunzel growing in the garden next
door inspired the fairy tale of Rapunzel. Popular history asserts
that peasants ate more salads than lords, and were the healthier for
it, and in fact salads, cooked and raw, included many ingredients
that would be "gourmet" today: lovage, burnet, sorrel.
The diarist
John Evelyn wrote a book on salads, Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets
(1699), that describes the new salad greens like "sellery"
(celery), coming out of Italy and the Netherlands.
Food
historians tell us salads (generally defined as mixed greens with
dressing) were enjoyed by ancient Romans and Greeks. As time
progressed, salads became more complicated. Recipes varied according
to place and time. Dinner salads, as we know them today, were popular
with Renaissance diners. Composed salads assembled with multiple
ingredients were enjoyed in the 18th century. They were called
Salmagundi. Today they are called chef's salad.
"Although
the ancient Greeks and Romans did not use the world "salad,"
they enjoyed a variety of dishes with raw vegetables dressed with
vinegar, oil, and herbs...The medical practitioners Hippocrates and
Galen belived that raw vegetables easily slipped thorugh the system
and did not create obstructions for what followed, therefore they
should be served first. Others reported that the vinegar in the
dressing destroyed the taste of the wine, therefore they should be
served last. This debate has continued ever since...With the fall of
Rome, salads were less important in western Europe, although raw
vegetables and fruit were eaten on fast days and as medicinal
correctives...The term salade derived from the Vulgar Roman herba
salata, literally salted herb'. It remained a feature of Byzantine
cookery and reentered the European menu via medieval Spain and
Renaissance Italy. At first "salad" referred to various
kinds of greens pickled in vinegar or salt. The word salade later
referred to fresh-cooked greens of raw vegetables prepared in the
Roman manner."
Salad
dressings and sauces have a long and coloUrful history, dating back
to ancient times. The Chinese have been using soy sauce for 5,000
years; the Babylonians used oil and vinegar for dressing greens
nearly 2,000 years ago; and the ever-popular Worcestershire was
derived from a sauce used since the days of the Caesar. Indeed, early
Romans preferred their grass and herb salads dressed with salt.
Egyptians favoUred a salad dressed with oil, vinegar and Oriental
spices. Mayonnaise is said to have made its debut at a French
Nobleman's table over 200 years ago.
Salads were
favoUrites in the great courts of European Monarchs - Royal salad
chefs often combined as many as 35 ingredients in one enormous salad
bowl, including such exotic "greens" as rose petals,
marigolds, nasturtiums, and violets. England's King Henry IV's
favoUrite salad was a tossed mixture of new potatoes (boiled and
diced), sardines and herb dressing. Mary, Queen of Scots, preferred
boiled celery root diced and tossed with lettuce, creamy mustard
dressing, truffles, chervil and hard-cooked egg slices.
But, in the
Twentieth Century, Americans went a step further in salad development
... making it a fine art by using basic dressing ingredients (oil,
vinegar or lemon juice, and spices) and Yankee ingenuity, to create
an infinite variety of sauces and dressings to make salads the best ever.
Coleslaw:
Dutch word for cabbage is "kool" which led to the English
word for a cabbage-based salad.
Caesar Salad:
Honours restaurateur Caesar Cardini, who is said to have invented it
in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924. Cardini's original recipe included
romaine, garlic, croutons, Parmesan cheese, boiled eggs, olive oil
and Worcestershire sauce. He was said to be staunchly against the
inclusion of anchovies in this mixture, contending that the
Worcestershire sauce was what actually provided that faint fishy flavour.
Cobb Salad:
Was the invention of yet another restaurateur, Bob Cobb, who in 1926
at his Los Angeles restaurant, now known as The Brown Derby, found a
way to use up leftovers. The original recipe for Cobb salad: avocado,
celery, tomato, chives, watercress, hard-boiled eggs, chicken, bacon
and Roquefort cheese.
Horseradish:
(Prepared) Horseradish has nothing to do with horses and it is not a
radish (it's a member of the mustard family). The name may have come
from an English adaptation of its German name. In early times the
plant grew wild in European coastal areas; the Germans called it
meerrettich, or sea radish. The German word meer sounds like mare in
English. Perhaps mareradish eventually became horseradish. The word
horseradish first appeared in print in 1597 in John Gerarde's English
herbal on medicinal plants.
Mayonnaise:
Many authorities believe the first batch of this mixture of egg
yolks, oil and seasonings was whipped up to celebrate the 1756 French
capture of Mahon, a city on the Spanish Isle of Minorca, by forces
under Louis-Francois-Armad de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu.
Besides enjoying a reputation as a skillful military leader, the Duke
was also widely known as a bon vivant with the odd habit of inviting
his guests to dine in the nude. The Duke, or more likely, his
personal chef, is credited with inventing this edible monument to
that strategic success.
Green Goddess
Dressing: A mixture of mayonnaise, anchovies, tarragon vinegar,
parsley, scallions, garlic, and other spices was created at San
Francisco's Palace Hotel in the 1920's for actor George Arliss, who
stayed there while performing in The Green Goddess, a play that later
became one of the earliest "talkie" movies.
Russian
Dressing: Got its name because the earliest versions of the mixture
of mayonnaise, pimientos, chives, ketchup, and spices included a
distinctly Russian ingredient: caviar.
Thousand
Island: Made from bits of green olives, peppers, pickles, onions,
hard-boiled eggs and other finely chopped ingredients, this chunky
dressing is said to commemorate the Thousand Islands in the Saint
Lawrence River.
The Way Ahead
Throughout the
second half of the twentieth century salad tended to become very much
a second class dish in restaurants in the UK. As ethnic restaurants
grew in popularity, salad became relegated to garnishing, often
plated for decoration rather than for consumption as the preparation
was often questionable.
Some groups
showed the way with an "all you can eat" salad bar but the
items available tended to be unimaginative and many people came to
think of a salad as a dish with lettuce, cucumber and tomato.
With the
emphasis on health the time has come for the salad to come back into
its own not only for nutrition but also for enjoyment.
A carefully
crafted salad is a thing of beauty boasted a variety of tastes and
should most certainly grace the main dishes listings in most
restaurants. The top Indian restaurants in particular are re-discovering
the excitement of salads that have long been a feature of Indian
cuisine in the sub-continent. Ingredients such as scallions, spring
onions, rose water, pomegranate seeds and subtle dressings set the
taste buds buzzing and I have no doubt that salad in all its forms
will become an important feature of many of the cuisines in Britain.
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