Caesar salad
|
A Caesar salad topped with grilled chicken. |
Caesar salad is a traditional
salad often prepared tableside. It is sometimes termed the "king" of salads.
|
Hotel Caesars in Tijuana where Caesar salad was invented |
Caesar salad was invented in
1924 by
Caesar Cardini. Cardini was an
Italian restaurateur and
chef in
Tijuana,
Mexico. He was living in
San Diego but working in Tijuana to avoid the restrictions of
Prohibition. There are several stories about the specifics of the salad's creation. The most common is that it resulted from a
Fourth of July rush depleting the kitchen's supplies, and Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of a table-side tossing. Another is that it was created for a group of
Hollywood stars after a long weekend party.
Most stories say that Cardini had to whip something up from what he had left in his kitchen, and the Caesar salad was the result. The
Hotel César still exists in downtown Tijuana, where the original dish is still served.
A Caesar salad is generally made from the following ingredients:
*
romaine lettuce*
croutons
*
lemon juice
*
olive oil*
Parmesan cheese* raw,
coddled or hard-boiled
egg yolks* fresh-ground
black pepper*
Worcestershire sauceThe original Caesar salad
recipe did not contain
anchovies; the slight anchovy flavor came from
Worcestershire sauce. Cardini was actually opposed to using anchovies in his salad. Most modern recipes now include anchovies as chopped fillets or in paste form.
Julia Child, in her book,
From Julia Child's Kitchen, describes how she ate a Caesar's salad at Cardini's restaurant as a child in 1924, and many years later she sought out Cardini's daughter, Rosa Cardini, in order to discover the original recipe. Rosa Cardini's recipe differs from those that appear in the links below. In particular, the
lettuce is served whole on the plate. It is meant to be lifted by the stem and eaten with the fingers. It calls for coddled eggs but no
anchovies.
Some recipes include one or more of
mustard,
avocado,
tomato,
bacon bits,
garlic cloves, or
anchovies. Many restaurants offer a more substantial salad by topping a Caesar salad with grilled
chicken, grilled salmon or
shrimp. The salad today is served at several Italian and some Mexican restaurants, with certain Mexican restaurants improvising on occasional items such as substituting
tortilla strips for croutons and
Cotija cheese for the Parmesan.
The Cardini family licensed the original recipe early on, and bottled Cardini Caesar salad dressing is still available, sans anchovies. Many other bottled versions are sold now, as well, including
Morgan's and
Newman's Own.
Many people are concerned about the safety of Caesar salads due to the potential risk of infection by
salmonella bacteria occasionally found in raw eggs. This is a concern with many similar dressings like
mayonnaise, though in most cases, the
pH level is thought to be
acidic enough to kill the bacteria. Nevertheless, later versions of the recipe call for briefly-cooked
coddled eggs or
pasteurized eggs. Even a switch to chopped, hard-boiled eggs has not prevented sporadic outbreaks of salmonella from restaurant-made Caesar salads. Today, many recipes omit the egg and produce a Caesar
vinaigrette.
*Riffing on the popular idea that Caesar salad was invented by or for
Julius Caesar, the Canadian comedy duo of
Johnny Wayne and
Frank Shuster (both now deceased) did at least two versions of a sketch in which Caesar's chef (played by Shuster) prepares the ingredients of a modern Caesar salad, and says, "You shall name this salad, Caesar". After a moment of pondering, Caesar (played by Wayne) replies (in one version of the sketch), "I name it...
coleslaw." Brutus offers his knife to the cook when the cook disparages the new name.
*Another joke, an atrocious
pun, is set up by bandits invading Julius Caesar's birthday party seeking lettuce. Caesar shows them a truly beautiful salad. The bandit chief replies, "We come to seize your salad, not to praise it!"
*In the video game
Civilization IV, Julius Caesar greets the player with the statement "Welcome to Rome, (player name). Care for some salad? I made it myself."
*In an episode of the
television series Bewitched, Esmeralda (played by
Alice Ghostley) attempts to use magic to make a Caesar salad and accidentally conjures Julius Caesar.
*In the movie
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, the eponymous characters' history teacher claims that the only thing they've learned in his class is that "Caesar... was a salad dressing dude."
*
List of foods named after people*
Salad (Caesar) - A classic recipe, also notable in making use of the phrase ". . . à la Pete Townshend (without all the booze and deafness, of course)."
*
Alton Brown's version -
Alton Brown (of the cooking show
Good Eats) provides this recipe that attempts to be true to the original.
*
Ensalada César at the
Baja California tourism site (in Spanish).
