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Why
does a Caesar salad go by that name?
Caesar Cardini
The
salad consists of greens (classically romaine lettuce) with a garlic
vinaigrette dressing.
The Caesar salad was once voted by the International Society of
Epicures in Paris
as the "greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in fifty
years."
Caesar
salad honors restaurateur Caesar Cardini (1896-1956) shown above,
who invented
it in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924 on the Fourth of July weekend. It
is said that on this busy
weekend, Cardini was running low on food and he put together a salad
for his guests
from what was left over in the kitchen. Caesar experimented and
that evening the Caesar's
Salad was born. "Take everything to the table" he said,
"and make a ceremony of fixing
the salad". His original recipe included romaine, garlic, croutons,
and Parmesan cheese,
boiled eggs, olive oil and Worcestershire sauce. The original salad
was prepared at
tableside. When the salad dressing was ready, the romaine leaves
were coated with
the dressing and placed stem side out, in a circle and served on
a flat dinner plate,
so that the salad could be eaten with the fingers.
Caesar
was born near Lago Maggiore, Italy, in 1896; he and his brother
Alex emigrated to
the U.S. after World War I. In 1926, Alex Cardini joined his brother,
Caesar, at the Tijuana
restaurant. Alex, an ace pilot in the Italian Air Force during World
War I, added other
ingredients, one of which was anchovies, and named the salad Aviator's
Salad" in honor
of the pilots from Rockwell Field Air Base in San Diego. It is reported
that Alex's version
became very popular, and later this salad was renamed "Caesar
Salad."
Over
the years, it became quite the thing to do — to drive to Tijuana
for a Caesar Salad.
Famous movie stars like Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and W. C. fields
came and gossip
columnists wrote about it in the newspapers. Julia Child was a youngster
when her
parents drove there in 1925 or 1926 to see what all the fuss was
about, and in her
book, "From Julia Child's Kitchen," she wrote about the
tableside performance.
Julia
Child's Recipe: Created after Consultation with Rosa Cardini, Caesar's
Daughter.
Mrs.
Wallis Warfield Simpson (wife of Prince Edward VIII of Wales, former
King
of England) often visited and partied in the San Diego and Tijuana
areas in the 1920s.
During this time, she visited Hotel Caesar's Place and became fond
of Caesar's Salad.
The salad was introduced to many of the great European restaurants
by her instructing
international chefs how to make it. Legend also says that because
she preferred not
to eat food with her fingers, she was the first to cut the lettuce
leaves into delicate
bite-sized pieces with a knife and fork rather than indulging in
the finger food.
In
1948 Caesar Cardini established a patent on the dressing (which
is still
packaged and sold as "Cardini's Original Caesar dressing mix,"
distributed by Caesar Cardini Foods, Culver City, California.
.
From
... What'sCookingAmerica.net
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