Some Short Salad History Featuring Whisk

jhemsabino
Apr 26, 2021
2 min read

Updated: Oct 4, 2022

Before anything else, it seems that I haven't posted anything about salad.

Regardless of the fact that my blog is named after it. hahah So before people ask about it. Let me share with you some of my research about what we thought "greenly" food.

According to foodtimeline.org,

The basis for the word salad is 'sal', meaning salt. This was chosen because in ancient times, salt was often an ingredient in the dressing.

"Salad, a term derived from the Latin sal (salt), which yielded the form salata, 'salted things' such as the raw vegetables eaten in classical times with a dressing of oil, vinegar, or salt. The word turns up in Old French as salade and then in late 14th century English as salad or sallet."

---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson

"Etymologically, the key ingredient of salad, and the reason for its getting its name, is the dressing. The Romans were enthusiastic eaters of salads, many of their differing hardly at all from present-day ones--a simple selection of raw vegetables...--and they always used a dressing of some sort: oil, vinegar, and often brine. And hence the name salad, which comes from Vulgar Latin Herba salata, literally 'salted herb'."

---An A-Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto

It is not a surprise that the salad was that old to be present during ancient times. As we all know we humans start consuming vegetables Back when early civilization started and our ancestors learned that they can eat and cultivate crops.

People began farming at different times in different parts of the world. Around 8500 b.c. hunter-gatherers in the area of southwest Asia known as the Fertile Crescent began to cultivate wild grains and domesticate animals.

But despite its old background did you know that Caesar Salad has no connection with the Roman General Julius Caesar? The reason why we correlate the two is that the only Caesar we know is the ruler of Rome.

The iconic Caesar salad was named after its creator Cesare (Caesar) Cardini, an Italian immigrant who lived in San Diego but, circumventing Prohibition laws in the United States, operated a popular restaurant in Tijuana, just south of the Mexican border.

I want to focus on Green Salad especially Caesar Salad. A very known salad, that most of the food industry has on their menu.

The basic ingredients of this salad are romaine lettuce, croutons, eggs parmesan cheese, and a dressing that contains olive oil, lime juice, Dijon mustard.

I ordered mine from Whisk.