Vinaigrette

Since Roman times (and no doubt from still earlier periods), people have eaten vegetables so customarily in an oil or fat medium that they felt no need to talk about it. Then, as now, greens were cooked in oil or animal fat. What made something a salad was the addition of vinegar. Whence vinaigrette.

Somewhere buried in the dawn of human cuisine, the addition of vinegar to vegetables must have had to do with preservation and the culinary effect of vinegar on food. In ancient days, i