The Emergence of Salet or Salad

The term “salad” was not used in ancient Roman times, but it derives from the Vulgar Latin herba salata, literally “salted herb.” It was in Renaissance Italy that the word “salad” first appeared. By the sixteenth century many salads were common, including dishes of cress, hops, wild cress, asparagus, and chervil. The saying that a good dressing demands “a miser for the vinegar, a spendthrift for the oil, and a wise man for the salt” predates the seventeenth century. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, green salads were not commonly eaten in France, although they were served on the tables of the upper class and in the restaurants that had just emerged. About this time the classic French way of making a salad, with vinaigrette as the most common salad dressing, was established. Demonstrating French culinary power in the nineteenth century, the vinaigrette became known as french dressing in Great Britain and America.