Caesar salad
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A Caesar salad (also spelled Cesar, César and Cesare), also known as Caesar's salad, is a green salad of romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with lemon juice (or lime juice), olive oil, eggs, Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, garlic, Dijon mustard, Parmesan and black pepper.
The salad was created on July 4, 1924, by Caesar Cardini at Caesar's in Tijuana, Mexico, when the kitchen was overwhelmed and short on ingredients. It was originally prepared tableside,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and it is still prepared tableside at the original venue.
HistoryEdit
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The salad's creation is generally attributed to the restaurateur Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who operated restaurants in Mexico and the United States.<ref name="obit">Template:Cite news</ref> Cardini lived in San Diego, but ran one of his restaurants, Caesar's, in Tijuana, Mexico, 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.<ref name="Rosa1">Template:Cite news</ref> Some other accounts 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> A number of Cardini's staff have also said that they invented the dish.<ref name="grant">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}In , D. Grant quotes Aviator's salad and more (2007)</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> A popular myth attributes its invention to Julius Caesar.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> A 2024 book<ref name="s242">Template:Cite book</ref> confirmed the claim that Caesar Cardini originated the recipe. Livio Santini's son, Aldo, countered that his father provided the recipe while working as a cook in Cardini's restaurant.<ref name="u932">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The American chef and writer 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, and croutons made with garlic-infused oil.<ref name="child">Template:Cite book</ref> 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, parmeasanTemplate:Sic cheese, olive oil, vinegar and plenty of black pepper.<ref name="kilgallen">Template:Cite news</ref>
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.<ref name="stuff/10429532">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="kitchenproject/CaesarSalad">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In the 1970s, 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.<ref name=child/> 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.<ref name=variations>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=child/> Modern recipes typically include anchovies as a key ingredient, and are frequently emulsified or based on mayonnaise.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
DressingEdit
Bottled Caesar dressings are produced and marketed by many companies, including Cardini's, Bolthouse Farms, Ken's Foods, Marzetti, Newman's Own, Panera Bread, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods Market.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
IngredientsEdit
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Common ingredients in many recipes:<ref name=variations/>
- Romaine lettuce
- olive oil
- crushed garlic
- salt
- Dijon mustard
- black pepper
- lemon juice
- Worcestershire sauce
- anchovies
- whole eggs or egg yolks, raw, poached 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> While the original Caesar's in Tijuana uses lime juice in their current recipe, most modern recipes use lemon juice or vinegar.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=kilgallen/>
Some chefs experiment more broadly with variations of the salad, using the familiar, appealing "Caesar" name to attract diners to dishes with a similar hit of "umami, fat, and tons of salt" that otherwise bear little resemblance to the original.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
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External linksEdit
Template:Salad dressings Template:Mexican cuisine Template:Salads