Caesar Salad

A Caesar salad has romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper. It may be prepared tableside.

The salad's creation is generally attributed to restaurateur Caesar Cardini an Italian-born Mexican . 1 Cardini was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana where he avoided the restrictions of Prohibition. As his daughter Rosa 1928 2003 reported, 2 her father invented the dish when a Fourth of July 1924 rush depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of the table-side tossing "by the chef".

Another story is that the salad was created for Hollywood stars after a weekend party. Others suggest Caesar's brother Alex created it as "Aviator's salad" for San Diego aviator comrades who were in a hurry, and the dish was renamed later, when Alex was a partner of his brother. A few fellows among Cardini's personnel claimed the authorship, but without success. 3

There is no direct documentary reference to it until the mid-1940s twenty years after the 1924 origin asserted by the Cardinis. It appeared on a Los Angeles restaurant menu in October 1946.

The original Caesar salad recipe unlike Alex's Aviator's salad 6 did not contain pieces of anchovy the slight anchovy flavor comes from the Worcestershire sauce. Cardini was opposed to using anchovies in his salad.

In the book From Julia Child's Kitchen, Julia Child describes how she ate a Caesar salad at Cardini's restaurant when she was a child in 1920s, and some 50 years later she called Cardini's daughter, in order to discover the original recipe. In this recipe, lettuce leaves are served whole on the plate, because they are meant to be lifted by the stem and eaten with the fingers. It also calls for coddled eggs and Italian olive oil.