Caesar salad has something to celebrate: it’s turning 100 years old.
Italian immigrant Caesar Cardini is said to have invented the dish on July 4, 1924, at his restaurant, Caesar’s Place, in Tijuana, Mexico. It was a steamy night, and Cardini was trying to feed an influx of Californians who had crossed the border to escape prohibition.
In the middle of the dining room, Cardini tossed whole romaine leaves with ingredients he had on hand, including garlic-flavored oil, Worcestershire sauce, lemon, egg and Parmesan cheese. A star was born.
Tijuana plans to commemorate the anniversary this month with a three-day food and wine festival and the unveiling of a statue of Cardini. Caesar’s — a fancy restaurant Cardini opened in Tijuana a few years after the salad was born — says it still makes up to 300 Caesar salads every day.
Unlike some other menu items from the early 20th century – think liver bread with cream or aspic – Caesar salad remains a perennial favorite. About 35% of US restaurants have Caesar salad on their menus, according to Technomic, a restaurant consulting firm. And nearly 43 million bottles of Caesar salad dressing — or $150 million worth — were sold in the U.S. last year, according to Nielsen IQ.
Beth Forrest, a professor of liberal arts and applied food studies at Culinary Institute of Americasaid it took several years for Caesar salad to hit the market. A recipe because he didn’t “The Joy of Cooking”, one of the most popular American cookbooks, until its publication in 1951. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Caesar salad was often prepared tableside, giving it an air of spectacle and sophistication, she said.
Forrest said the Caesar salad is ideal for the Western palate because it contains our two favorite textures: crunchy and creamy. Egg yolks and Parmesan cheese are also rich in glutamate acids, which give the salad the rich, salty flavor known as “ umami. “
“It pleases us in many hedonistic ways, while we can still feel virtuous. At the end of the day, it’s a salad,” Forrest said.
Caesar’s many variations have also given him staying power, experts say. Chefs can add chicken, bacon or salmon, stir in kale or Brussels sprouts and make the dressing from miso paste or tofu.
At Beatrix, a five-restaurant chain in Chicago that makes healthier versions of comfort foods, chef and partner Andrew Ashmore spoons a yogurt-based dressing into the bottom of a salad bowl and mixes it with capers, parsley, lemon vinaigrette and champagne. . vinegar before adding some precious lettuce, baby arugula, breadcrumbs and a generous shaving of Grada Padano cheese.
“It’s our number one selling salad and has been since we opened 11 years ago,” Ashmore said. “I couldn’t try to take it off the menu if I wanted to.”
Cardini was not inclined to change his recipe. In a 1987 interview with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, his daughter Rosa Cardini said her father was very precise in preparing his creation. He used only the tender, inner leaves of Romaine lettuce and left them whole, intending for diners to pick them up with their fingers. He boiled the eggs for a minute before adding them and did not use anchovies.
There is some debate about the origin of the salad. Some claim the recipe was actually from the mother of Livio Santini, one of Cardini’s chefs and another Italian immigrant. Others say Cardini’s brother, Alex, was the creator of the salad, which he made with lime and anchovy paste. Alex’s version was called “The Aviator’s Salad” because he supposedly served it to the planes from a base in San Diego.
Forrest said the recipe also echoes old Italian specialties. It resembles a pinzimonio, a sauce olive oil and lemon juice used as a vegetable sauce, or a bagna cauda, a hot anchovy and garlic dip from the Piedmont region where Cardini was born.
Caesar’s in Tijuana did not respond when asked about the history of the salad by The Associated Press, but the restaurant mentions Santini’s name on its website.
Business in Tijuana declined after the end of Prohibition, so Caesar Cardini moved his family to Los Angeles in 1935. They filled Caesar’s outfit at home before eventually founding Caesar Cardini Foods Inc.
Rosa Cardini took over the family company in 1956 after her father’s death, eventually adding 17 more outfits. T. Marzettia maker of dressings and dips, bought Cardini Foods in 1996 and still sells Caesar Cardini brand dressings.
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Durbin reported from Detroit.