Types of Salads

Today, the variety of salads on offer seems to be greater than ever in memory. Restaurants that once listed no more than two or three salads on their menu now devote an entire page to the category. New kinds of salad fill bin after bin in the prepared-food sections of supermarkets and delicatessens.

At the same time, more traditional salads have not lost their importance. In schools, hospitals, nursing homes, neighborhood diners, and mom-and-pop restaurants, cooks who never heard of mesclun still must know how to clean a head of iceberg lettuce and how to prepare flavored gelatins.