My name is Eva Longoria and I am my de Remezracon and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores are past and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture. So make yourself at home, even broche.
I feel like today we're throwing everybody in a curveball. This episode is all about salad.
I love a good salad. I love a good Caesar salad. It's one of my favorites, and I love that it has Mexican roots.
So let's kick things off of the history of this Caesar.
This one's super interesting because it has Mexican roots, but it was an Italian immigrant who was working in Tejuana. Tell me about its history. It's so interesting. It's always like the immigrants that make things better, right. I feel like it's been this through line this season.
But most historians have traced the creation to the Caesar salad to Tijuana to nineteen twenty four at Hotel Caesars. And it was this hotel that was run by an Italian immigrant named Caesar.
Garvini sa ser Garvigni.
He and his brother Alex opened up a restaurant Sacramento, San Diego and Tijuana in the early twenties, and legend has it that it was invented on Fourth of July weekend when the kitchen was running low on ingredients, and so all of the ingredients for the caesar salad came together improvisationally. And these included like romaine, lettuce and garlic and coudled eggs, olive oil, wooster sauce, parmesan cheese, and croutons. And then now it has anchovies, but those were added later.
Not very happy that the anchovies were added later.
You're not a fan of anchovies.
Now, I'll use a paste and addressing sometimes, But sometimes I do think caesar salads anchovies are too it's too strong.
They are strong. Oh, I think that they make everything taste better. But I love a good anchovy.
But when we think of Tijuana in the nineteen twenties, this was the prohibition era in the States, so a lot of Hollywood stars and wealthy Americans were going across the border to drink legally. And Garni was a professional, you know, he was all about hospitality and he wanted to cater to them, and so he started tossing these ingredients table side from this big wooden bowl, and it added to.
The drama and the allure of this salad.
So it was like the performance right the spectacle table side and people like Jeane Harlow and Clark Gable and like, oh, they just fell in love with this, this flavor and this experience.
So it was table side in Tijuana. But how does that make it worldwide? How does that become a global salad that is now on every menu and every restaurant. How did it go from their little restaurant.
To the world.
So they he sold the restaurant in the nineteen thirties, moved to la and he focused on marketing the salad dressing.
So he trademarked the dressing in nineteen forty eight, and his.
Daughter Rosa began bottling the dressing at home and labeling it and selling it at farmers' markets, and they started this Ceesa Gardini Foods.
And then the nineteen forties.
Lettuces like iceberg lettuce and remain became the favorite because it could survive sort of cost country travel because they were so hardy. It kind of went hand in hand with the salad dressing that was being then marketed around the country and it.
Became this wow.
In nineteen fifty three, the International Society of Epicure, which is a group of professional chefs based in Paris, proclaimed the caesar salad the greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in fifty years.
It's the only recipe forrig.
I'm kidding because the Americas include Mexico, and so I will not I will not want to disparage the Americas, but like from the US, since they went to la and then that's where it was bottled and then went hand in hand with this like lettuce transit. I don't know what else has surpassed this recipe. I try all kinds of caesar salad dressing recipes, and some have the raw eggs and some don't, and some have olive oil, and sometimes they put the angoby sometimes I don't. I
just think it's I really agree. I think it's one of the best recipes ever. So Joya Child wrote about the caesar salad from her Julia Child's Kitchen cookbook, and it said she said, one of my earliest remembrances of restaurant life was going to Tijuana in nineteen twenty five or twenty six with my parents, who were wildly excited to lunch at Caesar's restaurant. How crazy that joya Child's went and ate there as a child, and that the parents went there specifically to order the Caesar salad that
Caesar himself used to toss at the table. Of course, Julia Child's experience to this.
Of course she did as a child, and it's stuck in her brain. And she goes on to say in that same quote that it was a sensation of a salad from coast to coast, and there were rumblings of its.
Success in Europe.
Right, So even before the Society of the Epicures called it the greatest salad, the greatest invention from the Americas, there were rumblings of it in Europe.
So I think it's so cool.
I've been the deep one of many times, but I've never been I've never been to this one because it got taken over, like a whole group took over Caesar's in two thousands.
I don't know.
It reminds me like another example where an immigrant makes things better is that Chinese chicken salad, that which is not a traditional Chinese dish, but that one wood that was created with shredded chicken and cabbage and crispy noodles and sesame soybase dressing. But it was adapted to Western tastes. But it was invented by a Chinese emigrant who moved to the US Duran World War two. So to me, like, I'm like, oh my god, that's the like Asian and
Caesar salad story. Is the Chinese chicken salad story. And then that one became famous because it was at a restaurant called Wolves Garden in Santa Monica, which became a favorite of Freight Sinatra via Pharaoh, Elizabeth Taylor, Carrie Grant.
And even Wolfgang Puck.
This Austrian immigrant, he created his own version at his Santa Monica restaurant, the Chinese chicken pilla salad at this restaurant, Shinoa on Maine in Santa Monica, down the street from Wo's Garden, which was also this hot spot in.
The nineteen eighties.
Well, humans, it feels like humans would have been eating leaves for a long time, So if humans have been eating raw plants for millennia, the idea of a salad as more of a deliberate mix of greens and vegetables and dressing.
That's more specific. I love how you call it the leaves. People have been eating leaves like leap be pa.
We've been eating leap be things for a very long.
Time, forever.
So the word salad comes from the Latin air of aasalata, meaning salted herbs. So the salad as an entree or a side dish composed of a mixture of vegetables intended to be cold but sometimes warm, and the simplest formed salad is one of the oldest dishes right. It's a mix of raw or cooked vegetables, herbs, fruits, sometimes sometimes proteins. But the concept stretches back thousands of years in the Mediterranean.
Evidence suggests that as early as ancient Greece around five hundred BC, people are combining raw leafy greens with herbs and oil and vinegar.
The ancient Romans.
Ate herb salads with like bitter greens like end dives or chickory, and they season them with vinegar, olive oil and garam, which was a fermented.
Fish, sauce, and salt.
So these were like an early I mean, it sounds very similar to the salads that we have today, maybe not the fish sauce so much, but everything else. And so they were often really simple and they were either a side dish or used as a digestive aid.
I would think that greens are medicinal, and I feel like even me growing up on the ranch, I remember my dad would like, give me some leaf ate this, chew on this, This will fluttel your stomach. This will, you know, get rid of your headache. This. My dad was always giving me something, some sort of plant, and so it's not it's not. I don't think it's a surprise that they were seen as like a digestive aid.
And Northern Europe, I feel like salads were less common because the cold tolerant greens were very, very limited, and so more in Northern Europe they included root vegetables and cabbage and preserved ingredients that were lightly dressed. And then that teaged it in the Middle Ages too, because in the Middle Ages in Europe, cooking techniques shifted toward heavy cook dishes, hardy dishes, especially among upperplasts, right like greens were eaten. I feel like you still can't find a
good salad in England. But the Renaissance came along and what happened then.
It made salads fashionable again, right, So Italian and French nobles served composed salads and they would art fully arrange lettuce and herbs and fruits and flowers and then dressed them lightly with vinegar and oil.
So it all it became this appeal again.
In each culture they have their own form of salad, like I feel like in China, they're more like raw vegetable dishes and they've been eating that since the Han dynasty, like two hundred BC. Cucumbers, huge cucumbers, radish obviously dressed with soy, sauce, vinegar, sesamese. It's super Asian influenced. And then Japanese always had the Japanese culture always. It's so funny because I just had sushi. They have the pickled things.
So it's all the pickle, the pickled onions, the pickled cucumbers, and they don't dress, they don't do a lot of dressing, but they do pickle and and you know, flavor rather than mixing. They don't really like do these elaborate salad.
Yeah, it's not like a toss salad.
It's just a different I had a grey cucumber dish last night in the Japanese vission. I was like, oh, this is divine. It was so simple. It was just cucumbers pickled in something.
Yeah, like some rice, vinegar or something right.
And and also like when we think of like Korean food, like the kimchi and all of those sort of pickled. So every culture has its own way of eating a salad. When we come back, the ranch dressing becomes king. Let's talk about then a great burnette.
I love a vinagrette. Oh my god, I never buy a salad dressing. By the way, it's cheaper to make your own. It tastes better, there's no preservative. It's just make your own vinaigrette, and it may so your own.
I agree, it's the best thing. I love to make a good vineigrette. So let's talk about the roots of the vinaigrette. So the modern sense of the word vinaigrette was first recorded in the Dictionary of French Academy in sixteen ninety four, which described it as a type of cold sauce made with vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and sometimes fresh herbs like parsley and chives. And then Chef august Escoffier who we talked about. We've talked about before. He
standardized the vinaigrette. He standardized the vinaigrette in his nineteen oh three cookbook Leguide Quilli Nard.
I can't remember which episode we talked about this.
But yeah, the Culinary Guide. He created the Bible of all Sauces, and this was in there as well. The vinegar rat was like and he created the Bible of like, this is the base, because you can have a champagne vinegrette, you can have a balsamic vinaigrette, you can have a sherry vinegrette. But this was like, this is a bit. This base is the vinegrette that all other vinegrettes can come out of.
Right, And it's three parts oil to one part's vinegar. That's what he sort of standardized this. This ratio you can do two to one for extra tag.
That's what I do. I do two. I like it.
So Eskofe's classic vinaigrette documented is three to on racial oiled vinegar and an addition of mustard to eight in the binding.
Oh okay, oh.
That's right, because most mustard then it moosifies it, right, it makes it kind of creamy.
Yeah, nice.
So that is the classic French vinigrette is one part vinegar, three parts oil and a teaspurn of Dijon mustard.
That is a vinagrette.
After that, if you had balsamicro champagne or orange or garlic or whatever, then it becomes whatever you want. I love it. But when did I guess? Why would did we ever go away from this? And then bottle dressing took.
Over twentieth century, Right, everything starts changing companies, big companies like Craft and Helmets. They began marketing mayonnaise based dressings and they made by doing this, they made really creamy salad dressings accessible in American supermarkets. So mayonnaise had also been invented in France in the eighteenth century, and it became the base for the most popular dressings in the US. And these include, of course Thousand Island and Ranch and Green.
Goddesses and Thousand Island.
I don't I don't like the buff mayonnaise. Now, what is your favorite?
N My favorite vinaigrette is probably a challotte vineagrette, Like I always add challlettes to my vinaigrette. A lemon vinaigrette obviously, just squeezeing some lemon in there. I'll usually do a lemon selly vinaigrette. I had a little honey in mine as well. But I love one thousand alan. I love me some ranch, but only if I make it. If I make it like with the packet and all that. I don't like ranch like in the bottle, already made. And I love Caesar dressing. So I have many dressings.
I'm a dressing person.
I love dressings me too. I have my your go too.
My go to is I have a little mortar and pestele and I smash anchovies and garlic like a lot with salt, just like get it in there until it's like a paste and my mouth is watering.
Just think about this.
I add lemon juice, like fresh lemon juice, and then whisk in some Dijeon mustard and then the olive oil and just whisk it and it's just, oh, it's ridiculous.
From America, the most iconic dressing outside of the vinaigrette has got to be ranch dressing. People love it so much. I use it on pizza, wings, fries, veggies. There's even ranch tourritos. There's my protein chips come in ranch flavor. My corn nuts come and ranch flavor. Like I it is a flavor I really love. Where did it come from?
Because it is.
Pretty unique and it's I mean, you really can't find it in Europe unless you go to an American store.
Yeah, I mean I've never looked, but yeah, it's like.
I mean, I think they the French pressure would forbid a ranch dressing in other menu.
Unless you go to edge to American diner or something. So ranch dressing is super interesting. It's credited to a man named Steve Henson and who was born in nineteen eighteen.
He was a.
Black cowboy and plumber turned cook from Nebraska. So in the nineteen forties he worked as a plumbing contractor in Alaska and he had to feed his crews, and so he began experimenting with seasoning mixes to make the meals that he was serving much more appealing. And he came up with this blend of mese, buttermilk and herbs, and
people flipped out because it was so good. And then in the nineteen fifties he moved to Santa Barbara and he and his wife brought He and his wife Gail, they bought a ranch and named it Hidden Valley Ranch.
Oh my god.
So they ran it as a guest they served you know, it was like a guesthouse, kind of the guest ranch, and they had visitors and they served these amazing meals and they topped these this food right with this signature dressing, and people.
Raved about it, and it.
Was so popular they started selling the little seasoning packets that people could make this at home.
So one I like, that's your that's the Steve Henson.
And in the nineteen sixties, Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing was being distributed all over. But in nineteen seventy two they sold the brand to Chlorox for eight million dollars, which is around fifty million dollars today, and they reformulated it for bottle ling and making it, you know, shelf stable and easy to sell nationwide. And to date it is the US's number one dressing, I'm sure, but not globally.
Globally is still the vinaigrette. Yeah, globally it's still the vinaigrette. It's definitely the US. The US. That is an amazing story.
He was robbed by the way he should have gotten. I believe it was a black cowboy, lack American cowboy slash plumber slash cook. That's amazing cowboy.
Yeah, I know it's amazing, And yes he was robbed. I agree, I agree.
So but vintagreats are still the global classics. But creamy dressings like ranch dominate the US, and then sesame dressings dominate Japan, and then the older based dressings dominate Middle East South Asia, and then spicy citrus is like South Southeast Asia. So I love, I love all the dressings. I forgot HI about to tell you about my Asian dress, my Asian spicy dressing.
What is it?
It's like based, and then I have a yogurt based one that's really I use for eggs.
Anyway, I could go through so good. I love say oil.
I love dressings, but I don't drown my food. And so I always say start like when you're when you're doing your respect the greens. Respect the green, especially like it depends if you have butter lettuce. I suppose you're romain lettuce right now. In Spain they have these little three packs. It's my favorite lettuce. It's like a mix between butter lettuce and romain. It's like the perfect hardy green. Anyway, Kale can really take on a lot of dressing you really, Yeah,
it's that you can. You got a massage your your kale. But sometimes, like you know, rugula or butter lettuce just like it can't handle a lot. It's kind of like pasta. You got to figure out the sauce for the pasta, the right pasta for the sauce, right, same with the dressings.
It's the same thing. Yes, you're right. You have to really know your ingredients and treat them with respect. Yeah, what if.
Some cultures eat salad at the beginning of the meal and others toward the end.
So in the US and Latin America and Northern Europe, salad is usually a starter to stimulate the appetite, and in places like you know these are like Korea, leafy grains and pickle vegetables are eaten alongside the main dishes. But in other parts of Europe, like France and Italy,
each course has a specific purpose and rhythm. So a salad with a light vineagrette comes after the main meal, but before dessert, and the idea is that the salad's fiber cleanses the palette and aids and digestion sort of refreshing the stomach after these rich foods and eating before my discourage overeating.
After the break.
Let's talk about one of my favorite bars, the salad bar.
That's a good one. Can we talk about the salad bar? My god, the evolution of the salad because of this salad bar idea. When I think of the salad bar, I think of high end restaurant. In my head, I think of like staying and then I think back and I'm like, no, that was Golden Corral and by the way, Wendy's.
I went to Windy's.
We had a salad bar, the salad bar that I had to tend to when I worked at Wendy's. So I don't know why my head it feels like an elevated, sophisticated thing. But let's talk about how the salad bar changed and evolved the salad as I guess a main course.
As a main course.
I have to say, when I think of the salad bar growing up, I remember going to Pizza Hut and having that's my first salad bar experience.
Yes, but I don't know why my hand, I think it's like elevated and sovistiated, But it wasn't it was Wendy's, it was Pizza Hut, it was gral like there.
Wasn't Yeah, it wasn't a fancy steakhouse.
But there are several Midwestern restaurants that claim the salad bar, and the earliest widely cited claim is the Cliffs Supper Club in Springfield, Illinois, and they installed what they called the first salad bar in nineteen fifty. And so this post war health food movement of the sixties and seventies made salads trendy, and restaurants saw the salad bar as efficient as this really cost effective way to offer a variety of foods of ingredients without a huge kitchen staff.
So steakhouses, pizza parlors and term pizza.
Hut, and just like family restaurants offered salad bars as this sort of you know all you can eat for you know all, you can eat salads for the price of your your meal.
But I guess was like the salad movement started in California.
The guy that claims to have started the the salad bar was in Illinois. But according to David Camp, the author of the United States of Arugula, the idea of a salad as a course came from California. Before the mid century, salad was like Iceberg, or if you were.
Fancy, like Romance.
I remember growing up with we had salad all the time, but it was Iceberg.
Lettuce, always Iceberg. I didn't even know there was other lettuces. Yeah, neither did I. It was it was Iceberg. It was Iceberg. It was iceburg, vinegar and oil.
And then it took people like Alice Waters a Chippannie in the early seventies to get people into fancy European style greens like redicio and langala.
I remember the person I had. I was like, ew, yeah, what is this? Now I love it, but it's too bitter? What is this? And now I love a meal. I love a grilled salad. Oh my god, I love a grilled salad.
I love baby arugola.
You know when I did searching for Mexico that a googola. The plant the first time you cut the leaves, you just cut the leaves, and then the leaves grow back, and you cut the leaves and they grow back the more like the fifth time you cut them.
It's super spicy.
Really, that's the plant's defense mechanism to say, stop sucking cutting me are you serious spicy ruggle? Have you ever had a spicier rugla that you're like, it feels like pepper?
Yes, I love it.
That's because it can't be cut anymore. That was the last time that you could cut from that one plant. But usually it gets like four or five cuts. Oh, I had no idea. The first cut is like the freshest baby baby regula. It's not very spicy. But if you get spicy rogola, oh my god, it's like, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, let me grow, let me grow over. Anyway, I learned that and searching
searching for Mexico. You another salad I love. I love the taco salad, but Taco Ball invented that because I feel like they should have a deeper history.
Well, yes, it's sort of deep fried to die bowl filled with grand beef and beans and lettice and serc.
This was in nineteen sixteen seventies.
Mexican inspired food were becoming mainstream, so it was this kind of combination of the salad bar to the Mexican inspired you know food. So yeah, because it's sort of this it's sort of this text mix creation.
But by the eighties, like these salad bards were everywhere. Wendies some blur but they will nal.
For us, Sessler was a big deal.
It was a big deal when we went to Sizzler.
So to be able to go back all you can eat what wow? What? And now I guess the most popular it's not a salad bar, but the most popular like uh, salad slash breadsticks is Olive Garden. Oh my gosh, lot of less salad, a lot of the salad and bridstick's kind of special they had that looked like brought me up.
It's so good. Oh my god, I do like that Island Garland.
Like the salad bar. I do love us. It must be their vinaigrette race.
Their vinaigrette. It's so good.
But it's not a salad bar. They just bring you like salad. Yeah yeah, but I know that salad bar started to wane because of COVID yep.
And you know it was like once COVID hit.
Remember even like the sneeze guards on the salad bars were like notaking that protective. Okay, but yeah, somebody's self served buffets and salad bars. They disappeared because of hygien concert which by the way, it wasn't until coovid. I was like, yeah, that was probably not very hygienic out
out out out there in the middle of everywhere. So I think, you know, some salad bars have survived in steakhounses, but the concept really has has evolved into like, uh, a solid assembly or bowls like chipolt bulls or bowls.
The bowls.
Yeah, we're like, I can still customize my quote unquote salad or protein bowl. So I feel like that's the latest evolution of a salad.
Thanks everybody for listening. Bye everyone, Thank you for listening.
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