The Elements of the Ideal Salad

What exactly is a salad? Is it merely a few raw ingredients tossed together in a bowl with a dressing, or is it more complex than that? For my purposes in writing this book, I have taken the view that a salad is a mixture of ingredients, individually prepared (as opposed to being cooked together in a stew), that all work in harmony with each other, some simply tossed together and others arranged on a plate. Some are just assemblages of delicious ingredients, each looking after itself, and some are great swathes of ingredients working together to create a meal in one.