Excuse me as I indulge in a rather random blog post. They say that you (should) learn something new every day, but those new things don’t necessarily have to be useful. They might have to do with the naming of common food products, for example, as is the case with the omnipresent Caesar salad. It has nothing to do with the Roman emperor of the same name.
We see the Caesar salad offered at all sorts of different restaurants, from humble bar and grills to fine dining establishments. There are certainly some variations to the recipe, but you’ll usually find romaine lettuce, lemon juice, Parmesan cheese and some croutons. Some places may include anchovies, crushed garlic, olive oil, salt and black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, bacon and capers. You might come across a chicken Caesar salad. You might have the lettuce all cut up or you might get a few whole leaves. Whatever the case, we can usually recognize a Caesar salad when we see one.
All this time, I assumed that the Caesar salad (for whatever reason) was named after Julius Caesar, the Roman general, Consul and later dictator of the ancient Roman empire. He’s the guy that you might know from the William Shakespeare play and while other Roman notables also had “Caesar” as part of their names, Julius is perhaps the best known. And we would be completely incorrect in attributing the Caesar salad name to the (in)famous Roman.
As I somewhat randomly learned a few days ago, the Caesar salad is actually attributed to man named Caesar Cardini. Originally from Italy, he immigrated to Mexico where he opened a number of restaurants. He also had restaurants in the United States. We’ll take this story with a grain of salt (and a dash of pepper), but apparently it was during a Fourth of July celebration in 1924 that Cardini found his kitchen was running low on supplies and ingredients.
He had to do what he could with what he had on hand. To make the dish seem more exciting than it really was, he prepared his “Caesar salad” table-side. This salad tossing “by the chef” is a tradition that is still upheld to this day in certain restaurants.
Do you have an interesting food (name) story to share? I’d love to hear it.
I don’t know the full extend of the story, but do know it originated in Mexico or New Mexico.
I always wonder why Italian restaurants serve it when it’s not even Italian. I do like very much, and have had the pleasure of watching it made at the table.
It’s Italian in the sense that Caesar Cardini was originally from Italy.
Pasta are not from italy either
I remember seeing this recently too Michael. Seems last week you were doing trivia on Twitter, Danish Pastry and other things. I brought up that Bogart never said “Play it again Sam” in Casablanca. Maybe it was somewhere in there. The Caesar salad story is way too close to the story of how Nachos were invented. I take it that it was invented by Mr. Cardini, but not out of necessity.
Spaghetti, is Chinese, while the fortune cookie is American.
That’s partly true. Correct me if I’m wrong, but “noodles” originated in China and then variations popped up in other parts of the world like ramen in Japan and spaghetti in Italy. “Spaghetti” as we know it is Italian, but it is based on Chinese noodles.
As far as the fortune cookie goes, I believe it was created by the Chinese-American community in California, but it is based on a Japanese cracker recipe… the concept of putting a little slip of paper on there with a fortune, though, I believe is American.
Things you learn from Alton Brown and Good Eats. Also the fish taste you find in Caesar dressing isn’t anchovies, but Worcestershire sauce, which contains anchovies.