A Caesar salad (also spelled Cesar, César and Cesare) is a green salad of romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with lemon juice (or lime juice), olive oil, eggs or egg yolks, Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, garlic, Dijon mustard, Parmesan cheese, and black pepper.
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| Course | |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | Mexico |
| Region or state | Tijuana, Baja California |
| Created by | Caesar Cardini |
| Invented | 1924 |
| Serving temperature | Chilled or room temperature |
| Main ingredients | Romaine lettuce, croutons, Parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg yolks, Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, (Optionally) Dijon mustard, black pepper |
| Variations | Multiple |
The salad was first improvised in July 1924 at the Caesar's restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, on a day when the kitchen was overwhelmed and short on ingredients. It was originally prepared tableside.[1]
History
The salad's creation is generally attributed to the restaurateur Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who operated restaurants in Mexico and the United States.[2] Cardini lived in San Diego but ran one of his restaurants in Tijuana to attract American customers seeking to circumvent the restrictions of Prohibition. His daughter, Rosa, recounted that her father invented the salad at the Tijuana restaurant when a Fourth of July rush in 1924 depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of table-side tossing by the chef.[3] Some recountings of the history state that Alex Cardini, Caesar Cardini's brother, made the salad, and that the salad was previously named the "Aviator Salad" because it was made for aviators who traveled over during Prohibition.[4] A number of Cardini's staff have also said that they invented the dish.[5][6]
Julia Child said that she had eaten a Caesar salad at Cardini's restaurant in her youth during the 1920s, made with whole romaine lettuce leaves, which were meant to be lifted by the stem and eaten with the fingers, tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, coddled eggs, Parmesan cheese, and croutons made with garlic-infused oil.[7] In 1946, the newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen wrote of a Caesar containing anchovies, differing from Cardini's version:
The big food rage in Hollywood—the Caesar salad—will be introduced to New Yorkers by Gilmore's Steak House. It's an intricate concoction that takes ages to prepare and contains (zowie!) lots of garlic, raw or slightly coddled eggs, croutons, romaine, anchovies, parmeasan [sic] cheese, olive oil, vinegar and plenty of black pepper.[8]
In a 1952 interview, Cardini said the salad became well known in 1937, when Manny Wolf, story editor and Paramount Pictures writer's department head, provided the recipe to Hollywood restaurants.[9][10]
In the 1970s, Julia Child published a recipe in her book From Julia Child's Kitchen, based on an interview with Cardini's daughter, in which the ingredients are tossed one-at-a-time with the lettuce leaves.[7] Cardini's daughter and several other sources have testified that the original recipe used only Worcestershire sauce, not anchovies, mustard, or herbs, which Cardini considered too bold in flavor.[11][7]
Although the original recipe does not contain anchovies, modern recipes typically include anchovies as a key ingredient, and are frequently emulsified or based on mayonnaise.[12]
Bottled Caesar dressings are now produced and marketed by many companies. The trademark brands, "Cardini's", "Caesar Cardini's" and "The Original Caesar Dressing" are all claimed to date to February 1950, although they were only registered decades later,[13][14] and more than a dozen varieties of bottled Cardini's dressing are available today, with various ingredients.
Although the original Caesar's in Tijuana uses lime juice in their current recipe, most modern recipes use lemon juice or vinegar.[15][8]
Modern chefs sometimes put experimental salads on menus under the Caesar name despite the lack of resemblance to the original recipe. Unrelated variations, called "mutants" and "bastardized" in The Atlantic, use the familiar, appealing name to attract diners to dishes with a similar hit of "umami, fat, and tons of salt."[16]
Ingredients
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Common ingredients in many recipes:[11]
- Romaine or Cos Lettuce
- Olive oil
- Crushed Garlic
- Salt
- Dijon mustard
- Black pepper
- Lemon juice
- Worcestershire sauce
- Anchovies
- Whole eggs or egg yolks (raw or coddled)
- Grated Parmesan cheese
- Croutons
Variations include varying the leaf, adding meat such as grilled chicken or bacon, or omitting ingredients such as anchovies and eggs.[17]
Vegan versions can replace anchovies with capers and the eggs with tahini.[18]
Health concerns
There is risk of infection by salmonella bacteria occasionally found in raw egg.[19][20]
See also
Citations
Further reading
- Greenfield, Terry D. (1996). Lorna Bolkey; Kathryn Hall (eds.). In Search of Caesar: The Ultimate Caesar Salad Book. Alexander Books. ISBN 978-1-57090-014-3.
- Mariani, John F. (1985). The Dictionary of American Food and Drink. Book Sales. ISBN 978-0-89919-199-7.
- Stradley, Linda; Cook, Andra (1997). What's Cooking America. Chehalem Publishing. ISBN 978-1-885221-55-1.
- Trager, James (1995). The Food Chronology: A Food Lover's Compendium of Events and Anecdotes, from Prehistory to the Present. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-3389-2.