Acetaria Caesaris apud Juliam

Among culinary innovations of the last century, there are few as widespread, or as variable, as the Caesar salad. Rather like the sandwich or the cocktail, it is the sort of thing that seems so obviously correct that it is difficult to imagine a time before it existed. (And yet for millennia we did without it!) The popularity of the Caesar salad has been, perhaps, its undoing: any food so ubiquitous is bound to suffer a thousand iniquities by way of stale or cheapened ingredients and incompetent preparation. A local establishment here in Iowa City, billing itself as a "salad company", is content to call anything a Caesar if it has enough of the nominal dressing (pre-made, mind you) on it. I have been asked whether I want a Caesar salad with spinach. I do not. (An aside: how does one register as a "salad company"? It is anything like a "salad factory", where assembly-line workers clad in gray overalls each add one ingredient to a salad? Are there "salad mines" where, when the whistle blows, the miners emerge from the earth after a twelve-hour shift, smeared with ranch dressing instead of coal-dust?) Perhaps even worse — or at least more expensive, and less forgivable — are the culinary horrors of fusion cuisine. Does anybody really want a Caesar salad with curry, or wasabi? I submit to you that they do not.

The fundamental uncertainty of Caesar salad can be traced to its inception. Or rather, it can't be traced anywhere, since we can't even agree on where or when the salad was invented. The leading theory is that it was first made in the twenties at Caesar Cardini's restaurant in Tijuana. (Tijuana, Mexico: "the happiest place on earth", according to Krusty the Clown.) Julia Child, la grande dame herself, recounted visiting the restaurant with her parents and watching raptly as Caesar prepared the salad in front of them. She later would get the recipe from Caesar's daughter, and presented it in From Julia Child's Kitchen, an invaluable resource that I consult from time to time. In one of those acts of impassioned pedantry that make the Internet truly worthwhile, somebody has copied this account in its entirety on a website titled simply There are no anchovies in Caesar Salad. The recipe as Julia gives it contains all the wonted ingredients, without the accretions (anchovies, shrimp, chicken, bacon) that would later muck it up. It is worth noting that the original version was served on whole romaine stems, eaten with the hands. (This is a bit odd, but not unpleasant.) But the most jarring quality of the Ur-Salat is that the olive oil, lemon juice, coddled eggs, and Worcestershire sauce are not mixed beforehand! I found this to be most unsatisfactory, as without an emulsified dressing, each bite tastes of whatever liquid happened to fall upon it. In my first bite of an "authentic" Caesar salad, I must've had all the Worcestershire sauce in one go, for that was all I tasted. Subsequent mouthfuls tasted of oil, or lemon, or eggs, but nary a bite tasted like a harmonious union of the whole.

So much, then, for authenticity. I find a much better result is possible when one mixes the dressing together beforehand, and then applies it to the romaine. The only downside is that this method lacks the panache of mixing all ingredients at once in the salad bowl. But then, ours is an unglamorous and unimaginative age.