- "My salad days, When I was green in judgement..."
- —Cleopatra, in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 1606
A salad is a food item generally served either prior to or after the main dish as a separate course, as a main course in itself, or as a side dish accompanying the main dish. The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, from the Latin salata, "salty", from sal, "salt". (See also sauce, salsa.)
It is most often composed of a mixture of uncooked vegetables, built up on a base of green leafy vegetables such as one or more lettuce varieties, dandelion, spinach, or rocket. This is often referred to as a "green salad".
Other common vegetables in a green salad include tomato, cucumber, peppers, mushroom, onion, spring onion, carrot and radish. Other food items such as pasta, olives, cooked potatoes, rice, croutons, meat (e.g. bacon, chicken), cheese, or fish (e.g. tuna) are sometimes added to salads.
Types of green salad
Salad dressings
A green salad is often served with a dressing. Some examples include:
Other types of salads
Some salads are based on food items other than fresh vegetables:
- Various Bean salads like green bean salad, seven bean salad
- Chicken salad
- Egg salad
- Fruit salad — sliced, peeled fruits served in their own juices or with a dressing.
- Larb — the national dish of Laos, made from raw or cooked meat with herbs, spices and lime juice
- Pasta salad
- Potato salad
- Somen salad — Japanese somen noodles, garnish, and a vinegar-based sauce; served cold.
- Som tam — Thai salad made with raw papaya
- Tabouli - wheat bulgur, parsley, tomatoes, cucumber, lemon juice, oil, served cold
- Waldorf salad — apples, celery, walnuts, and a creamy dressing.
- Watergate salad — pistachio pudding, crushed pineapple, marshmallows, mandarin oranges, and whipped cream.
History
In the Middle Ages, after a long winter of salted meats and pickled vegetables, people would be "salt-sick" and starving for spring greens. A pregnant wife's yearning for rapunzel growing in the garden next door inspired the fairy tale of Rapunzel. Popular history asserts that peasants ate more salads than lords, and were the healthier for it, but in fact salads, cooked and raw, included many ingredients that would be "gourmet" today: lovage, burnet, sorrel.
The diarist John Evelyn wrote a book on salads, (published in 1699), that describes the new salad greens coming out of Italy (like "sellery" (celery)) and Holland.
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