Salad: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

"My salad days, When I was green in judgement..."

—Cleopatra, in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 1606

A salad is a food item generally served either prior to or after the main dish as a separate course, as a main course in itself, or as a side dish accompanying the main dish. The word "Salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, from the Latin salata, "salty", from sal , "salt". See also sauce, salsa.

It is most often composed of a mixture of uncooked vegetables, built up on a base of green leafy vegetables such as one or more lettuce varieties, dandelion, spinach, or rocket. This is often referred to as a "green salad".

Other common vegetables in a green salad include tomato, cucumber, peppers, mushroom, onion, sping onion, carrot and radish. Other food items such as pasta, olives, cooked potatoes, rice, croutons, meat (e.g. bacon), cheese, or fish (e.g. tuna) are sometimes added to salads.

Types of green salad

• Caesar
• Chef salad
• Greek salad
• Italian salad
• Mesclun
• Niçoise

Salad dressings

A green salad is often served with a dressing. Some examples include:

• French dressing
• Mayonnaise
• Olive oil
• Ranch dressing
• Vinaigrette

Other types of salads

Some salads are based on food items other than fresh vegetables:

• Chicken salad
• Egg salad
• Fruit salad — sliced, peeled fruits served in their own juices or with a dressing.
• Pasta salad
• Potato salad
• Somen salad — japanese somen noodles, garnish, and a vinegar based sauce; served cold.
• Waldorf salad — apples, celery, walnuts, and a creamy dressing
• Watergate salad — pistachio pudding, crushed pineapple, marshmallows, mandarin oranges, and whipped cream.

In the Middle Ages, after a long winter of salted meats and pickled vegetables, people would be "salt-sick" and starving for spring greens. A pregnant wife's yearning for rapunzel growing in the garden next door sets in motion the fairy tale of Rapunzel. Popular history asserts that peasants ate more salads than lords, and were the healthier for it, but in fact sallets, cooked and raw, included many ingredients that would be "gourmet" today: lovage, burnet, sorrel.

The diarist John Evelyn wrote a book on salads, Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets (published in 1699), that describes the new salad greens coming out of Italy (like "Sellery") or from Holland.