My Version of Caesar’s Salad
Once voted by The Society of Epicures in Paris as the greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in fifty years, it has since become bastardized beyond original recognition.
Most people don't know what Caesar's Salad is anymore. When you order a “Caesar Salad” almost anywhere and practically everywhere, you are getting ripped-off. Most menus don't even call it by its correct name, which is the possessive "Caesar's Salad" as opposed to the incorrect singular pronoun Caesar Salad. I personally boycott "Caesar Salad" anywhere. If they can’t get the name right, it’s a safe bet they won’t get the recipe right, either.
And to be clear, I am not promoting the original version of Caesar’s Salad. I am promoting a version of the salad that I learned as an assistant manager of a fine-dining restaurant in a swank hotel in Houston in the 1970s. But I am being honest about it. Look carefully at the title.
The creator of Caesar's Salad was an Italian, Caesar Cardini, who was a restaurateur in Tijuana, Mexico in the 1920s. There are other versions of the genesis of the Caesar's Salad, but Julia Child has written that she ate them at Cardini's restaurant when taken there by her parents as a little girl and later sought out Cardini's daughter, Rosa, for the original recipe. Although Rosa was born five years after the salad was created, she saw her father make it many times growing up around the restaurant.
According to the story made famous by Cardini's daughter, supplies in the establishment ran short one July 4th holiday weekend in 1924, when a lot of rich Californians would flood the city for all the things Tijuana offered that San Diego didn't, like booze and gambling because the country was in Prohibition and Las Vegas hadn't been invented yet. Caesar experimented with what he had on hand, and that evening, Caesar's Salad was born.
"Take everything to the table," he said, "and make a ceremony of fixing the salad. Let guests think they're having the specialty of the house." Later it was voted "the greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in fifty years" by the International Society of Epicures in Paris.
So, a lot of restaurants stole the idea and made the traditional Caesar's Salad table-side. But chefs and restaurateurs couldn't help themselves and slowly started changing the recipe.
The addition of prepared Dijon mustard was added to the dressing, which Cardini never used.
Then, anchovies were added to the dressing, which Cardini also never used, although they were probably inspired by the use of Worcestershire sauce which Cardini did indeed have in his original recipe and which does contain anchovy.
Then, the coddled egg was removed by local health code interference.
Then, table-side preparation disappeared altogether. That was the end of the Caesar's Salad as Mr. Cardini intended it.
Instead of using only the light green whole inner leaves of a head of Romaine, known as the heart, which was the way Caesar Cardini made the salad, restaurants starting throwing chopped Romaine in a bowl, pouring some institutionally prepared bottled dressing on it, throwing in some prefabricated croutons and called it a Caesar Salad.
Caesar’s Salad Somehow Became Fast Food
If all that wasn’t enough, the food packaging companies started retailing a bottled-up version of an otherwise freshly made dressing and loading it with preservatives to extend it's shelf life.
Grocery stores started selling Caesar Salad “Kits’ with Romaine lettuce they couldn’t sell otherwise, then added a package of dried-out bread, calling them croutons, and included the prefabricated bottled dressing now in little portion-control plastic packs.
Then, the semi-fast food chains started changing the recipe some more by adding ingredients like grilled chicken or shrimp along with their commercially prepared bottled institutional dressing, calling it a “Chicken Caesar Salad” or a “Grilled Shrimp Caesar Salad” and gleefully charging you $19.95.
Then, the fast food chains started packaging up a fistfuls of Romaine Lettuce, plasticized croutons with those portion-control packages of pre-made, gook-laden dressing and called it a Caesar Salad which, for $7.79 you could happily enjoy next to your Styrofoam box of meat and bun.
None of these concoctions even remotely resembles the original version of the true masterpiece, which was really very, very simple: garlic infused olive oil, toasted croutons, juice from one fresh lemon, freshly ground black pepper, Worcestershire Sauce, an egg, and Parmesan Cheese. And of course, the hearts of Romaine lettuce. which were served whole. Diners were encouraged to eat the leaves with their hands.
Even Cardini’s Isn’t Cardini’s
But what about a bottle of “Cardini’s The Original Caesar Dressing?” Surely that would resemble, if not actually be the original, wouldn’t it?
Nope. I’m not sure how they can legally get away with use of the word “Original”.
Cardini did not use soybean oil, vinegar, onion, xanthan gum, rosemary extract, molasses, corn syrup, caramel color, sugar, or tamarind. All of those items are in fact on the ingredient list of this bottle of Caesar Dressing. And it’s not like food chemists did all this to approximate the taste of real Caesar’s Salad. This isn’t even close to tasting anything like the original.
Modern interpretations of the salad aside, the Executive Chef at Delmonico’s Restaurant in Houston in the 1970s believed the addition of Dijon mustard and anchovy, mashed together as a paste before proceeding with the original Cardini recipe, enhanced the taste of the salad, and that was the version that I made for hundred of diners tableside during my tenure there.
Originally, the salad was served with whole leave from the heart of Romaine and diners were encouraged to eat the leaves with their hands. But the waste factor of the unused lettuce, along with diners’ reluctance to use their hands, had the restaurant adjusting its recipe, and the Romain leaves were hand torn into bite-size pieces. I will make it either way depending on the guests I am serving. Along with a dash of Tabasco as my contribution to the Delmonico’s iteration of Cardini’s recipe, constitute My Version of Caesar’s Salad presented here.
My Version of Caesar's Salad
Ingredients
- 3 Romaine lettuce hearts
- 3 anchovy fillets or 1 tbsp anchovy paste (like, Reese)
- 1 tbsp garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- juice of 1/2 fresh lemon
- 2 shakes Tabasco sauce
- 1 whole coddled egg
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/4 cup shredded or shaved Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- pinch of course sea salt
- 7-8 grinds freshly cracked black pepper
Instructions
- Sprinkle a pinch of course sea salt in the bowl
- Add the minced garlic and the anchovies or anchovy paste to the bowl, and using the back of large serving spoon, crush the garlic and the anchovy together until everything is ground down to a fine paste with no lumps.
- Next, add the mustard,lemon juice, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce, and blend this well with the anchovy and garlic paste.
- Crack in your coddled egg, and mix vigorously into the dressing. The mustard and the egg will form an emulsion.
- While mixing the dressing vigorously using either the serving spoon or a wire whisk, slowly pour in the olive oil. It, too, will emulsify into the dressing so that the entire mixture is a smooth, creamy consistency.
- Add the grated Parmesan cheese and blend well.
- Add the croutons to the dressing and allow them to sit for 3-5 minutes to soak up some of the dressing.
- Combine the Romain leaves with the dressing and toss thoroughly to coat. Add the shredded or shave Parmesan cheese to the salad, and a few grinds of freshly cracked black pepper.
- Serve on chilled salad plates.
Notes
- To coddle an egg, submerge it unbroken uncooked egg in near boiling water for one minute, and then place in cold water for five minutes while you begin the salad preparation.
- Use a wooden salad bowl to make the dressing. The rough texture of the wood is helpful in its preparation.
