Caesar salad: A culinary chameleon

If Instagram had been around in the 1920s, Caesar’s Restaurant and Bar in Tijuana, Mexico would have been the spot for a selfie. A selfie with a salad that is—a Caesar salad to be exact. Concocted by an Italian chef working in a Mexican kitchen, and made popular by a Hollywood crowd that decamped from Los Angeles to Tijuana to party during Prohibition, it’s an international sensation that was one of the first destination dishes. [Prohibition ended in the US]( in 1933, and in 1935, Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas [banned casinos]( Hollywood stars and mafia gangs who had flocked to Tijuana stopped coming. That didn’t stop the salad from finding a broader audience. Caesar Cardini, owner of Caesar’s and the chef most often credited with the salad’s invention, started selling bottled dressings in the US in the 1940s, and today you can find it, in one form or another, everywhere from steakhouses to airplanes, topped with chicken, shrimp, or [chickpeas](. “On any list of salads it’s likely to be the most popular,” John Harding, then the vice president for marketing at Restaurant Associates, [told the New York Times]( in 1993. Debates swirl around the salad, [including its origin]( whether [it should include anchovies]( and whether a Caesar topped with bacon bits or made with kale is truly still a Caesar. Let’s top this with some freshly ground pepper and dig in. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( [Quartz Daily Obsession] Caesar salad January 23, 2020 Hail Caesar --------------------------------------------------------------- If Instagram had been around in the 1920s, Caesar’s Restaurant and Bar in Tijuana, Mexico would have been the spot for a selfie. A selfie with a salad that is—a Caesar salad to be exact. Concocted by an Italian chef working in a Mexican kitchen, and made popular by a Hollywood crowd that decamped from Los Angeles to Tijuana to party during Prohibition, it’s an international sensation that was one of the first destination dishes. [Prohibition ended in the US]( in 1933, and in 1935, Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas [banned casinos]( Hollywood stars and mafia gangs who had flocked to Tijuana stopped coming. That didn’t stop the salad from finding a broader audience. Caesar Cardini, owner of Caesar’s and the chef most often credited with the salad’s invention, started selling bottled dressings in the US in the 1940s, and today you can find it, in one form or another, everywhere from steakhouses to airplanes, topped with chicken, shrimp, or [chickpeas](. “On any list of salads it’s likely to be the most popular,” John Harding, then the vice president for marketing at Restaurant Associates, [told the New York Times]( in 1993. Debates swirl around the salad, [including its origin]( whether [it should include anchovies]( and whether a Caesar topped with bacon bits or made with kale is truly still a Caesar. Let’s top this with some freshly ground pepper and dig in. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( By the digits [$2,000:]( Chicago rapper Valee’s salad budget (Caesar is his favorite) according to the song “Pepsi” [160:]( Calories in two tablespoons of Cardini’s Caesar dressing, the recommended serving size [8:]( Calories in one cup of romaine lettuce [79%:]( Increase in supermarket sales of prepared Caesar dressing from 1990 to 1991 due to greater awareness of salmonella in raw eggs [67%:]( Share of lettuce kit sales that goes to Caesar salad varieties [75%:]( Share of US full-service restaurants with Caesar salads in 2006 [13:]( Ingredients listed in the 2006 artwork Sin Mayonesa by Julio César Morales, Cardini’s grandson Wikimedia Commons Origin Story Salad days --------------------------------------------------------------- Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant and restaurateur, opened his Caesar’s Restaurant and Bar in Tijuana, Mexico in the early ’20s, at the height of Prohibition in the US ([it moved to its current location in 1927](. Cardini’s daughter, Rosa, pinned the date of the Caesar salad’s creation to a particularly hectic dinner service on July 4, 1924. The restaurant was running short of ingredients due to the heavy crowds. Cardini (though other accounts say it was Cardini’s brother Alex, or Livio Santini, the chef at the time, or their business partner Paul Maggiora) quickly went into the kitchen and improvised a salad, combining olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, dijon mustard, and egg yolks into a sauce that dressed romaine lettuce, and was finished with parmesan cheese and croutons. Word of the salad soon spread and the likes of Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, and W.C. Fields crossed the border to have a taste of the famous dish. Julia Child even feasted on it as a child. “People just didn’t eat salads in those days, especially not in the East,” [Child told the Baltimore Sun](. “Salads were considered foreign and sissy food.” Restaurants in Los Angeles soon began copying the dish, but with one added ingredient: anchovies. Whether stateside chefs mistook the original Worcestershire sauce for anchovies, or just added the briny fish to the mix is an open question. “[T]here are anchovies in Worcestershire sauce and somebody said it would be better or if the anchovies flavor were stronger,” [Ruth Reichl, former editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, told NPR](. “And actually, I think, it is better.” Giphy Membership Playing the long game --------------------------------------------------------------- In the 2000s, the average open-world game took just under 30 hours to complete. But by the 2010s, many had stretched into 50-hour sagas. Quartz’s Amrita Khalid takes a look at [how major game studios came to decide that longer is better](. [Read now]( quotable “I was 10 or 12 years old, and my parents were so excited, eating this famous salad that was suddenly very chic. Caesar himself was a great big old fellow who stood right in front of us to make it. I remember the turning of the salad in the bowl was very dramatic. And egg in a salad was unheard of at that point.” —[Julia Child, in the New York Times]( Giphy pop quiz What's the most popular salad dressing in the US? Thousand islandCaesarBlue cheeseRanch Correct. According to a 2017-2018 study by the Association for Dressings and Sauces, ranch is the most popular dressing in the United States. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. A brief history of important salads [1893:]( Oscar Tschirky, the original maître d’hôtel at the Waldorf Astoria, invents the Waldorf salad. There are no walnuts in his version. [1909:]( The Palace Court salad, which features crab meat and artichokes, first appears on the menu at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, where it remains today, in an updated format. [1923:]( Chefs at the Palace Hotel create the Green Goddess salad in honor of actor George Arliss, the star of the play The Green Goddess. [1924:]( The Caesar salad is invented in Tijuana. [1937:]( Desperate for a midnight snack, Bob Cobb, the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood, throws together an assortment of leftovers and tops it with French dressing, preparing the first Cobb salad. [Mid-1980s:]( Wolfgang Puck makes the beet and goat cheese salad famous at Spago, his restaurant in LA. [1983:]( An English translation of Cuisine Niçoise: Recipes from a Mediterranean Kitchen is published in the UK. It declares that salade Niçoise should only include fresh, raw vegetables, not the blanched green beans and boiled potatoes that are standard on British menus. [2007:]( Raw kale salad, often dressed Caesar-style, becomes a huge food trend. [Read the Quartz Obsession on Ranch dressing]( Have a friend who would enjoy our Obsession with Caesar salad? [ [Forward link to a friend](mailto:?subject=Thought you'd enjoy.&body=Read this Quartz Daily Obsession email – to the email – fun fact! According to cookbook author Diana Kennedy, Caesar’s brother Alex claimed he was the one who had invented the salad, not in a mad dash of necessity, but a dish he was developing called Aviator’s salad in a nod to the airfields in nearby San Diego. [Alex’s version used lime though, not lemon](. Watch this! You don’t sell the salad, you sell the sizzle --------------------------------------------------------------- Forget the sad dress-it-yourself Caesar you had for lunch. The real not-so-secret ingredient is the drama of tableside preparation. This video from El Gaucho in Seattle, Washington, walks you through each step so thoroughly you’ll be ready to replicate the experience at home. Or, watch a waiter at [Caesar’s Restaurant in Tijuana prepare the iconic salad]( in its birthplace. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji This one weird trick! Emulsification --------------------------------------------------------------- The invention of the Caesar salad is often described as a lucky combination of random ingredients that just so happened to turn out delicious. To a seasoned cook though, it’s not at all that surprising that marrying umami bombs like Worcestershire sauce, parmesan cheese, egg yolks, and anchovies with the bright acidity of lemon juice and tang of garlic would turn into something good. The key to the Caesar’s creamy coating, and the real hero of the dish, is [emulsification, or the process of combining two ingredients]( in this case oil and water, that don’t ordinarily mix, and making the resulting liquid more viscous than either of the ingredients alone. The [lecithin in egg yolks is a major culinary emulsifier]( responsible for the unctuous consistency of mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce, and they bind the olive oil and lemon juice into a flavorful base for the rest of the ingredients in Caesar dressing. The dijon mustard is also a common emulsifier in vinaigrettes, and can be used alone to solve the egg problem. Even though the eggs in the original recipe were supposedly coddled, heated through at a low temperature, that’s not enough to guarantee they’re safe to eat—in the US anywhere from [1 in 20,000 to 1 in 10,000 eggs are contaminated]( with the bacteria salmonella. Take me down this 🐰hole! So, what makes a Caesar? The creamy, garlicky salad can be made vegan, or with kale, or with a mix of lettuces, which can also be grilled, or topped with anything from a fried oyster to blackened tofu and still be called a Caesar on a menu. The [New York City food site Grub Street named more than a dozen different delicious Caesar salads]( as the city’s most exciting, and the variety really showcases just how flexible the format is. Giphy poll Do you want anchovies in your Caesar? [Click here to vote]( Nope.Yes, please!It’s fine as long as I can’t tell they’re in there. 💬 let's talk! In yesterday’s poll about [Mona Lisa]( 44% of you said you’ve seen it but it was “underwhelming,” 20% of you said you’re not interested, 20% of you said “yes, and it was beautiful,” and 17% of you said it’s on your bucket list. 📧 Correction: Yesterday’s email stated that thief Vincenzo Peruggia “wrapped the canvas” of the painting in a blanket. The Mona Lisa was not painted on canvas, but on a [poplar panel](. 🤔 [What did you think of today’s email?](mailto:obsession%2Bfeedback@qz.com?cc=&subject=Thoughts%20about%20Caesar%20salad%20&body=) 💡 [What should we obsess over next?](mailto:obsession%2Bideas@qz.com?cc=&subject=Obsess%20over%20this%20next.&body=) [🎲]( [Show me a random Obsession]( Today’s email was written by [Amrita Khalid]( edited by [Annaliese Griffin]( and produced by [Tori Smith](. The correct answer to the quiz is Ranch. Enjoying the Quartz Daily Obsession? [Send this link]( to a friend! Want to advertise in the Quartz Daily Obsession? Send us an email at ads@qz.com. Not enjoying it? No worries. [Click here]( to unsubscribe. Quartz | 675 Avenue of the Americas, 4th Fl | New York, NY 10011 | United States [Share this email](