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A Not So Simple Question

post #1 of 34
9/12/08 at 4:33am
Thread Starter 
So, the other night, I made a beet & orange salad in citrus vinaigrette. Mounded it on a bed of baby arugala and sprinkled with crumbled Saga. Delicious!

As I was enjoying it, however, a thought popped into my head. I don't know what a salad is. Seriously!

Well, of course I know what a salad is. It's uh, uhm, ah.....holy lettuce leaves, Batman. I really don't know.

No big deal. As the poet once said, google is my friend. So I start searching. No joy there. I looked at half a dozen or so definitions. Each of them was either too restrictive or so broad as to be meaningless.

It almost put me off my feed.

I figure I'll just turn to the pros and see if anybody can help me out. Anybody know?

What is a salad?
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post #2 of 34
9/12/08 at 5:59am
If you look at Jamie Oliver's recipes he even has warm salads.

Good to see you Chubs.
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post #3 of 34
9/12/08 at 6:11am
Salad according to dictionary(depending on which one you look at) is derived from "Sal :or salt whereas also from the French Salade and the Latin Salata. The dictionary defines it as a Colld mixture of fruits, or veges, with nuts or meats or cheese optional in a dressing of some kind. Today however we also serve them warm, How they got salt I cant figure? Oh well most of them are good so who cares.
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post #4 of 34
9/12/08 at 6:40am
I've wondered this too. I can't think of an all encompassing definition.
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post #5 of 34
9/12/08 at 7:15am
Thread Starter 
Ed, that's only one definition. And not a particularly good one. Among other things, it leaves out warm salads, and salads that do not have dressings, and those that lack the fruits and veggies, but are filled with all those optional others.

For instance, have you ever had a warm calamari salad? Nary a veggie near it. Does that mean it's not really a salad? Or merely that we're having trouble with the definition?

As to the derivation, if you look more deeply it actually stems from the Roman word for salt, and likely referred, originally, to salted vegetables.
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post #6 of 34
9/12/08 at 7:40am
Believe it or not I recently pondered this question my self. How is anything classified as a salad when there is “green” salad, fruit salad, chicken salad, egg salad, potato salad, pasta salad and on and on. And if all these things are salad what is a slaw.
I too googled and couldn’t find a satisfactory answer. I guess I will just have gaze into my belly button until the answer comes to me.
However, there are two good articles on Chef Talk about salad that I found very interesting.

http://www.cheftalk.com/content/display.cfm?articleid=77&type=article
http://www.cheftalk.com/content/display.cfm?articleid=78&type=article
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post #7 of 34
9/12/08 at 7:45am
FWIW:

1 definition found

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:

Salad \Sal"ad\ (s[a^]l"ad), n. [F. salade, OIt. salata, It.
insalata, fr. salare to salt, fr. L. sal salt. See {Salt},
and cf. {Slaw}.]
1. A preparation of vegetables, as lettuce, celery, water
cress, onions, etc., usually dressed with salt, vinegar,
oil, and spice, and eaten for giving a relish to other
food; as, lettuce salad; tomato salad, etc.

Leaves eaten raw are termed salad. --I. Watts.

2. A dish composed of chopped meat or fish, esp. chicken or
lobster, mixed with lettuce or other vegetables, and
seasoned with oil, vinegar, mustard, and other condiments;
as, chicken salad; lobster salad.
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post #8 of 34
9/12/08 at 7:50am
I always think of salad as being "assembled." All the ingredients are individually prepared and then simply placed together. It's not like a cooked dish where they absorb heat all at the same time.
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post #9 of 34
9/12/08 at 8:06am
You need to cook more Chinese food. :D:D
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post #10 of 34
9/12/08 at 8:07am
So is crudite with bagna cauda salad (deconstructed) or not?
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post #11 of 34
9/12/08 at 8:34am
Thread Starter 
>You need to cook more Chinese food.<

Not just Chinese. There are all sorts of things I can think of in which the ingredients are cooked separately and then assembled at the last minute.
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post #12 of 34
9/12/08 at 10:12am
salad:

a non-homogeneous mixture of 'the stuff indicated'


at first I added "intended for consumption" but then there's the german
"Kabel-salat" which is not edible . . .
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post #13 of 34
9/12/08 at 11:07am
salads


dan
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post #14 of 34
9/12/08 at 11:22am
works for me......good definition Dan.


Remember aspics were considered salads....tomato aspic especially.

Bet Joy of Cooking has a good definition.

What's the difference between appetizer & salad? So many could be considered both.
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post #15 of 34
9/12/08 at 11:45am
I'll give it a shot.

Drawing from experience, and putting my own ideas together with my memories of and imaginary conversations with the four most knowledgeable, inventive and disciplined people on food I've known: A salad is a composed dish consisting of a body of some food, and a dressing. The distinction between salads and other similar dishes is not temperature, nor the presence (or absence) of greens, but the composition of numerous small pieces which are "dressed," rather than "sauced."

Of course a salad can be stretched beyond this definition, even obvious salads such as a lettuce wedge (can steak be far behind?), where the wedge is served whole. However, said wedge is presented for the diner to cut herself, will fall into small pieces when it is, and the dressing will coat each piece (more or less) completely.

Drawing from the most concise, eloquent writer on the subject, Mme E. Saint-Ange in La Bonne Cuisine: There are fundamentally two different types of salads: "Simple" salads, where the body consists of a single major ingredient; and "Mixed" salads where the body consists of several important ingredients. There's some overlap as when a "simple salad" is so heavily garnished the garnish (croutons, sliced onion, sliced beets, sliced mushroom for instance) become a part of the salad itself.

You can't expect any definition to hold up completely. Some subjects lend themselves to precise definition. Physics, for instance, because we use the unambiguous language of mathematics to hold our discussion. Food no. The intersection of food and any human language is an entirely different matter. Setting the vagaries of English with its many antecedents and contributors aside, it's in the nature of cuisine to include change and envelope stretching. Cuisine, after all, is the mixture of food and fashion -- and fashion changes even faster than language. It's inevitable that language will frequently fail to be either sufficiently inclusive or precise to hold the salad.

Another great question. My head hurts.

Hope this adds something,
BDL
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post #16 of 34
9/12/08 at 12:47pm
The Time-Life Good Cook series Salad volume says the same thing, IIRC. I think Sonia Uvezian in her Book of Salads made a similar assertion.

You bring up a question for me: What's the difference between a dressing and a sauce?
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post #17 of 34
9/12/08 at 12:56pm
If what I wrote is bad then blame Random House College Dictionary and wyhiclopedia on the Internet. Based on some definitions I could then say a cassarole could be classified as a form of salad. Or is anything hot or cold garnished with a chiffonade of lettuce a salad /? Puree of Green Pea Saint Germaine garnished with chiffonade?/
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post #18 of 34
9/13/08 at 12:31am
The following is quoted from the Escoffier Cook Book. "Salads are of two kinds: simple, or compound. Simple, or raw salads always accompany hot roasts; compound salads, which generally consist of cooked vegetables, accompany cold roasts. Simple salads: They comprise, in the first place, those salads known under the name of green salads. Such as lettuce, romaine lettuce, chicory, endive, batavia (similar to water-cress), celery, corn-salad or field salad, dandelion, purslain, dittander, rampion, salsify (oyster plant) leaves, blanched dandelion, etc. Compound salads: Unless they leave the kitchen to be served immediately, compound salads are generally served without their ingredients being mixed. As the latter are generally of variuos colors, they are seasoned and set in distinct heaps of contrasted shades. The serving of compound salads is finished by means of borders consistiong of pieces of very red beet, gherkins, truffles, roundels of potatoes, and radishes. The method of arranging these vegetables constitutes the decoration, and the latter, being subject to no rules, is merely a matter of taste. I do not advise the moulding of compound salads, for the increased appetizing look resulting therefrom is small compared with the loss in the taste of the preparation. The simplest form of serving is the best, and fancifulness should not be indulged in, beyond the arrangement of the vegetables in a pyramid, surrounded by a decoarated border of aspic jelly."
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post #19 of 34
9/13/08 at 1:33am

just to throw a spanner in the works

not a technical answer but for me

a salad is DELICIOUS
salads are one of my favourite things , even in winter
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post #20 of 34
9/13/08 at 5:40am
Thread Starter 
>Based on some definitions I could then say a cassarole could be classified as a form of salad. <

Precisely the problem, Ed. Based on some of the definitions I've seen I could make a case that a beef stew is a salad.

Part of the problem is that most authorities---lexiconical or culinarian---assume we already know what a salad is, and then provide either extensional definitions or descriptions.

Look at greyeagle's post, for instance. Nowhere does Escoffier actually tell us what salads are. He describes two kinds (and, with Gallic arrogance, categortically states they are the only kinds) in rather vague terms, pontificates on when and how they are to be served, and more than implies that his presentation is the only one that counts.

But the basic question is: Would the mythical man from Mars, reading that "definition," have any idea what a salad is?

>You bring up a question for me: What's the difference between a dressing and a sauce?<

You beat me to it, Shel. I had the same question. And we could add "spread" to the group. Seems to me, in this context, the difference is defined by end use, not by the product itself.

Example: Mix together a large dollop of sour cream. Add a spoonful of Dijon mustard, perhaps a hint of grated horseradish, a little salt and pepper.

Spoon this over a wedge of iceburg and it would be a salad dressing.
Pour it over a ham, and it would be a sauce.
Cover a slice of bread with it, add some cold cuts and a sliced tomato, and its a spread.
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post #21 of 34
9/13/08 at 6:00am
Oy! My head hurts and it's only 6:00am ... :lol:
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post #22 of 34
9/13/08 at 6:18am
A salad is old wilted lettuce, thin slices of tomato that had to be cheered on to turn red, a few slices of purple cabbage to make the salad not look so dead, some ranch dressing that has ranch cattle dung in it for spice, and to top it off, some onion that was sliced 3 hours ago. Add croutons to give it some texture.
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post #23 of 34
9/13/08 at 8:13am
Thread Starter 
What? Call that a salad? You left out the sulfurous hard-cooked eggs that got lost in the walk-in three weeks ago. Gotta have something with a little nose appeal! :rolleyes:
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post #24 of 34
9/13/08 at 1:14pm
Therefore all definitions could be construded as correct. Does Escoffier mention anything warm? No, then therefore we could all say he was wrong.
Dressing, sauce , gravy, topping, the same argument could be made for all. All I know, call them what you wan t""make them and they will come""(Like something P.T Barnum said)
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post #25 of 34
9/13/08 at 3:05pm
In Minnesota where I come from, the official state salad is Jello.:D Most commonly either red with sliced bananas floating in it, or green with shredded cabbage, carrots, celery and onion in it. The official topping for the green kind is Miracle Whip. For special occasions it is made in a mold. No important dinner is complete without The Jello Mold. And for Ed, I didn't want to copy out the whole salad chapter from Escoffier, so what I posted was the intro. He does indeed mention warm ingredients, usually potatoes dressed with oil or vinegar or both along with some herbs. I believe in his day nearly any blend of vegetables was considered a salad. Also in his day, what we would call a side dish, he would refer to as a garnish. A far cry from the lemon slice or parsley that we think of as a garnish. Times change and so does terminology, so maybe it's time that the term "salad" is redefined. I do not agree nor disagree with Escoffier's description of a salad. I merely put the information out there because in the culinary field Esoffier set the standards still used today, so we refer to what he taught much like we use the dictionary to define words.
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post #26 of 34
9/13/08 at 3:30pm
Some people enjoy these sorts of semantic digressions and others don't. For most cooks, this is probably a sidenote of culinaria if even that. But for a few others, it's a bit more than that.

You'll notice that the people who fuss over it more seem to have "writer" associated wtih them somewhere. KYHeirloomer is a food writer, I'm a technical writer. For us, these sorts issues tend to crop up in more concrete ways than for many others.
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post #27 of 34
9/13/08 at 5:23pm
I enjoy the semantics as much as the content!:D I'm a long-time scrabble player, after all.
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post #28 of 34
9/13/08 at 8:52pm
Put it in a small bowl, stick a cracker or chip into it, and it's a dip.

mjb.
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post #29 of 34
9/13/08 at 9:00pm
I'll take a Gado-Gado, please.
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post #30 of 34
9/13/08 at 9:06pm
Not to return to the thread or anything, but ...

IMO a dressing is a sauce intended to completely, but lightly coat the food it dresses. That is, "dresses," as in clothes.

BDL
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