Caesar salad

ACaesar salad(also spelledCesar,CésarandCesare) is agreen saladofromaine lettuceandcroutonsdressedwith lemon juice (or lime juice), olive oil, eggs,Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, garlic,Dijon mustard,Parmesanand black pepper.
The salad was created on July 4, 1924, byCaesar CardiniatCaesar'sinTijuana, Mexico, when the kitchen was overwhelmed and short on ingredients. It was originallyprepared tableside,and it is still prepared tableside at the original venue.
The salad's creation is generally attributed to the restaurateurCaesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who operated restaurants in Mexico and the United States.Cardini lived inSan Diego, but ran one of his restaurants,Caesar's, inTijuana, Mexico, to attract American customers seeking to circumvent the restrictions ofProhibition. His daughter, Rosa, recounted that her father invented the salad at the Tijuana restaurant when aFourth of Julyrush in 1924 depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of table-side tossing by the chef.Some other accounts of the history state that Alex Cardini, Caesar Cardini's brother, made the salad, and that the salad was previously named the "Aviator Salad" because it was made for aviators who traveled over during Prohibition.A number of Cardini's staff have also said that they invented the dish.A popular myth attributes its invention toJulius Caesar.A 2024 bookconfirmed the claim that Caesar Cardini originated the recipe. Livio Santini's son, Aldo, countered that his father provided the recipe while working as a cook in Cardini's restaurant.
The American chef and writerJulia Childsaid that she had eaten a Caesar salad atCardini's restaurantin her youth during the 1920s, made with wholeromaine lettuceleaves, which were meant to be lifted by the stem and eaten with the fingers, tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice,Worcestershire sauce,coddled eggs,Parmesan, andcroutonsmade with garlic-infused oil.In 1946, the newspaper columnistDorothy Kilgallenwrote of a Caesar containing anchovies, differing from Cardini's version:
In a 1952 interview, Cardini said the salad became well known in 1937, whenManny Wolf, story editor andParamount Pictureswriter's department head, provided the recipe to Hollywood restaurants.
In the 1970s, Child published a recipe in her bookFrom Julia Child's Kitchen, based on an interview with Cardini's daughter, in which the ingredients are tossed one-at-a-time with the lettuce leaves.Cardini's daughter and several other sources have testified that the original recipe used onlyWorcestershire sauce, not anchovies, mustard, or herbs, which Cardini considered too bold in flavor.Modern recipes typically include anchovies as a key ingredient, and are frequently emulsified or based onmayonnaise.
Bottled Caesar dressings are produced and marketed by many companies, including Cardini's,Bolthouse Farms,Ken's Foods,Marzetti,Newman's Own,Panera Bread,Trader Joe's, andWhole Foods Market.The trademark brands, "Cardini's", "Caesar Cardini's" and "The Original Caesar Dressing" are all claimed to date to February 1950, although they were only registered decades later.
Common ingredients in many recipes:
Variations include varying the leaf, adding meat such as grilled chicken or bacon, or omitting ingredients such as anchovies and eggs.
While the original Caesar's in Tijuana uses lime juice in their current recipe, most modern recipes use lemon juice or vinegar.Modern chefs sometimes put experimental salads on menus under the "Caesar" even when there is no resemblance to the original recipe. Unrelated variations, called "mutants" and "bastardized" inThe Atlantic, use the familiar, appealing name to attract diners to dishes with a similar hit of "umami,fat, and tons ofsalt."
Veganversions can replace anchovies withcapersand the eggs withtahini.