caesar salad

Caesar Salad

A Caesar salad variation topped with grilled chicken.
Origin
Place of origin	Mexico
Region or state	Tijuana
Creator(s)	Cesare Cardini
Dish details
Course served	Hors d'œuvre
Serving temperature	Chilled or Room Temperature
Main ingredient(s)	Romaine Lettuce Croutons Lemon Juice Olive Oil Egg Worcestershire Sauce Black Pepper
Variations	Multiple

A Caesar salad has romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper. It may be prepared tableside.

History

The history of this popular salad is a controversial issue. There is a widely held misconception that it is named after Julius Caesar, but the salad's creation is generally attributed to restaurateur Caesar Cardini (an Italian-born Mexican).^[1] Cardini was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana where he avoided the restrictions of Prohibition. As his daughter Rosa (1928–2003) reported,^[2] her father invented the dish when a Fourth of July 1924 rush depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of the table-side tossing "by the chef".

Another story is that the salad was created for Hollywood stars after a weekend party. Others suggest Caesar's brother Alex created it as "Aviator's salad" for San Diego aviator comrades who were in a hurry, and the dish was renamed later, when Alex was a partner of his brother. A few fellows among Cardini's personnel claimed the authorship, but without success.^[3][4]

There is no direct documentary reference to it until the mid-1940s— twenty years after the 1924 origin asserted by the Cardinis. It appeared on a Los Angeles restaurant menu in October 1946.^[5]

Hotel Caesar's on Avenida Revolución, c.2000

Recipe

The original Caesar salad recipe (unlike Alex's Aviator's salad)^[6] did not contain pieces of anchovy; the slight anchovy flavor comes from the Worcestershire sauce. Cardini was opposed to using anchovies in his salad.^[7]

In the book From Julia Child's Kitchen, Julia Child describes how she ate a Caesar salad at Cardini's restaurant when she was a child in 1920s, and some 50 years later she called Cardini's daughter, in order to discover the original recipe. In this recipe, lettuce leaves are served whole on the plate, because they are meant to be lifted by the stem and eaten with the fingers. It also calls for coddled eggs and Italian olive oil.^[8]

The Cardini family trademarked the original recipe in 1948, and more than a dozen varieties of bottled Cardini's dressing are available today. Some recipes include one or more of mustard, avocado, tomato, bacon bits, or garlic cloves. Rochelle Low is credited with the creation of the "nouveau-Caesar" style by adding the hotly contested ingredient of anchovies to the dressing recipe. This style is found in fancy restaurants with the anchovies served on the side. Cardini's Brand original Caesar dressing is somewhat different from Rosa's version.^[9][10]

Many restaurants offer a more substantial salad by topping a Caesar salad with grilled chicken, steak, salmon or shrimp. Certain Mexican restaurants even improvise on items such as substituting tortilla strips for croutons and Cotija cheese for the Parmesan, or the addition of tomatoes in the Letchworth salad.^[11]

Ingredients

Cardini's recipe is now available as a bottled dressing

• Ingredients according to the Hotel Caesar's recipe from about 2006:^[12]
  • romaine lettuce
  • olive oil
  • fresh crushed garlic - often in olive oil
  • salt
  • fresh-ground black pepper
  • wine vinegar^[13]
  • lemon juice or lime juice - fresh squeezed
  • Worcestershire sauce
  • raw or coddled egg yolks
  • freshly grated Parmesan cheese
  • freshly prepared croutons

• Variations:
  • mayonnaise
  • variations of lettuce
  • chicken
  • capers
  • Romano cheese
  • anchovies
  • shrimp
  • salmon

Raw egg and salmonella

There is potential risk of infection by salmonella bacteria occasionally found in raw eggs.^[14] This is a concern with many similar dressings that are emulsified with eggs, though generally the pH level is thought to be acidic enough to kill those bacteria. Nevertheless, later versions of the recipe call at least for briefly-cooked coddled eggs or pasteurized eggs. Recipes may omit the egg and produce a "Caesar vinaigrette". Yogurt is sometimes substituted for the eggs to maintain a creamy texture.

References

Books

• Child, Julia. From Julia Child's Kitchen, 1975. ISBN 0-517-20712-5
• Greenfield, Terry D. In Search of Caesar - The Ultimate Caesar Salad Book, Tjicknor & Fields, 1983.
• Mariani, John F. The Dictionary of American Food & Drink, Ticknor & Fields, 1983.
• Stradley, Linda. What's Cooking America, Chehalem Publishing, 1997.
• Trager, James. The Food Chronology, Henry Holt and Company, 1995.

External links

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on Caesar salad

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Caesar salad

• History of Salads
• Narrative and original recipe from From Julia Child's Kitchen
• Caesar Salad from BigOven.com
• Caesar Salad Video from Hotel Caesar in Tijuana, B.C., Mexico