By their lettuce, you shall know them
By
One way to track culture is to track cuisine.
And one way to track cuisine is to track farm produce.
Why? Because farm produce comes with numbers as crisp as a head of iceberg lettuce.
Consider this snippet from an essay by Russ Parsons:
As late as the mid-1970s, iceberg lettuce accounted for more than 95% of all of the lettuce grown in this country.
Then along came the reborn Caesar salad. Invented in a Tijuana restaurant in the 1920s (which one is a subject of a bitter interfamilial dispute), for decades the Caesar kind of limped along in all of its garlicky glory as a California specialty Then, all of a sudden, in the late 1970s it was "discovered" by the fast food industry, often topped with very untraditional grilled chicken, and there followed a couple of decades of extremely heady popularity.
From almost nothing, by the mid ’90s, more than 16,000 acres of romaine was being grown. By 2000 that had increased to more than 60,000 acres and today it stands at more than 80,000.
Now, the work of the CCO begins.
What was the cultural significance of the iceberg salad? I think the answer here has something to do with what we were doing to food after World War II. Iceberg lettuce was easy to truck. It "kept" well. It was easy to prepare. Kids liked the snap, crackle, pop. The fact that it didn’t seem entirely natural…well, this was the 1950s, the decade that gave us TV Dinner, Tang, and Sugar Pops. In the 1950s, artifice was not a bad thing in food. Indeed, a postwar culture seemed to delight in seeing just how far food could be removed from nature. Consider Kraft Dinner. That orange color. It looked radio active. And that was regarded as a good thing, something one looked for in a family dinner.
But what about Caesar salad? It feels very Frank and the Ratpack, doesn’t it? Extravagant in its garlic, in its dressing and, when prepared at table, in its theater. Caesar salad is the kind of salad you would expect to be served in one of those swank night clubs, the ones you entered, if you were any kind of celebrity, through the kitchen, dropping twenty dollar bills as you went. (Recall from memory, please, the scene in Goodfellas movie.)
But while Frank and the Ratpack have been enjoying a certain "reheating" in the last few years, chiefly in the form of the "playa," the rest of American cuisine has moved swiftly away from just about everything it stands for. So why? Why should the Caesar salad have flourished? What does it say about us?
Your turn. Best answer gets a copy of Chief Culture Officer.
References
Parsons, Russ. 2010. Rise of the Modern Romaine Empire. LA Times. January 27, 2010. here.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Alexis Madrigal for featuring this article on his website. See this excellent website here.
Thanks to Alisa Weinstein for letting me know about Alexis’ website.
16 Comments
January 29th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
It’s the lettuce. At some point, came the idea (probably from those always a little bit too healthy Californians) that iceberg lettuce was just that: cold, unhealthy, flavorless. While the dark leafy wonderfulness of romaine was all about healthy eating, dark, green, flavorful, and the rarity of fresh foods. (We have a little ongoing debate about this in my household as my japanese partner is a fan of iceberg, I represent the food snob here and think: “Please! Have you no taste buds?”)
No a side note just for its hilarity, a friend of mine growing up in the midwest was in high school before he realized that the words salad and lettuce were not interchangeable. When his month made a salad it was just iceberg lettuce in a bowl with dressing.
January 29th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
I believe the primary factor was immigration and the resulting increase in diversity. The first waves of immigration to the U.S. were from countries with bland cuisine: Northern/Northwestern Europe, Britain, Eastern Europe… As new immigrants from farther reaches of the planet arrived, they brought with them new ingredients, foods, and flavors (Cesar salad was invented in Tijuana, right?). With the growing availability of previously unusual foods, American palates evolved toward complexity – from iceberg to Cesar. Then, as is the American way, those unusual cuisines just got absorbed in the melting pot.
This one may be too obvious to mention, but I’ll do it anyway: A secondary influence may have been the healthy eating/health foods trend.
January 29th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
I think the answer is in the types of people who were making the food decisions in the late 80’s early 90’s. This was the time Gen-X was really hitting its stride in terms of totally controlling their own lives. The Caesar salad, sushi, and even the rise of Whole Foods is as much about getting away from the food aesthetic of their parents (represented by the crunch of iceberg) as it is about healthy living.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Back in the summer of 1995 while on vacation from my marketing design degree, I suddenly took a disliking to the people nodding their heads vacantly to the nosebleed techno that filled the room just before the break of dawn. I was irritated for being surrounded yet again by the same people who stopped talking hours before, and yet liked their music harder and faster than I’m cut out for. So I walked to the travel agent a while later and booked a ticket to Hollywood.
While there to to extend my vacation I landed a a kitchen job in a Zagat top rated Melrose restaurant called Patina. The Chef asked me what restaurants I’d worked in before and I said Italian. But really it was Pizza Hut in Sutton. I’m a bit naughty like that.
Anyway I was responsible for for making the entire take away menu. I think it was 80 bucks a pop in those days for a signature white carry box that I was informed was de rigeur for the Hollywood bowl as well as discerning fliers who demanded the best of in flight food experiences.
As part of the insanely steep learning curve of prepping and cooking at a pace I don’t think I’ve ever surpassed I learned how to make what the executive chef explained was a Caesar salad and dressing which he insisted was free of any compromise. It was there I learned of its Tijuana roots but more importantly I made that salad to a very high standard day in and day out. The dressing was so authentic I would whip the egg whites each day from scratch to the right consistency and it was here I learned what I think distinguishes the sublime taste of a Caesar salad.
First off I would say the addition of anchovy and Parmesan is the signature keynote of the dressing. They are blended to a creamy consistency but I think cheese in a dressing added an unusual texture too.
In short Caesar dressing has an amazingly great taste. Parmesan and anchovies are not to everyone’s taste but once blended we’re talking about a sophisticated recipe created in an unsophisticated place.
Two last points. Romaine lettuce is way diffent. The shape is longer and more elegantly earthy and the taste is a much more complex and challenging flavour than Iceberg lettuce. It’s slightly sharper, looks a lot like it comes from a discerning salad man’s favourite weekend market and works well with the borderline sweetness of the dressing.
Finally an authentic Caesar isn’t complete without the croutons. I would drizzle olive oil over the sliced and only marginally stale French bread of the previous day and roast them in the oven before breaking them up in the salad. There’s complexity, there’s sharpness, there’s sweetness, there’s exotic. But most importantly, an excellently prepared Caeser is just a kick ass salad. It’s so good I always order one when I go to a new restaurant. I can judge the calibre of the cuisine on a Caeser. And if that doesn’t persuade you then the killer fact is that Romaine lettuce withstands the heat better.
I was going to ask you for a review copy of the book but I notice I’ve had to sing for my supper
January 30th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
The short answer is that Caesar salad embodies “culture” in the high, middle and low-brow sense of the word all at once. Charles’ post is a great example of the high, and I know a few people who like to keep their Caesar dressing secret, as proof of their mastery of the “art of the perfect Caesar”. At the other end, Kraft’s Creamy Caesar dressing and it’s many spin-offs (Kraft Free Caesar, Kraft Caesar Ranch, etc.) make any housewife or husband into a purveyor of culture to their family, and with the addition of Romaine, croutons and bacon bits, the bland salad becomes a dish and the salad-preparer a chef. In the middle can be anyone from a discerning connoisseur of Newman’s Own or anyone who takes the time to put together a Caesar from scratch. And no matter where you sit on that range, you are somewhere away from your dining table and in the swanky restaurant, biting into your salad with the same nonchalance as Sinatra or De Niro. Making Caesar is appropriating culture.
January 30th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Why flourished:
-elegant look (some salads look/are intended to be of a “…and the kitchen sink variety”, not the case w/Caesar salad) YET it is still a salad (thus a claim to being a healthy start of the meal)
-appealing both to men and women
-acidity in the salad might increase the appetite for the rest of the meal
-interestingly, unlike in other cultures, American classic salads are intended to be eaten ALONE/or at the beginning of the meal rather than to complement other elements of the main dish
I feel like the salad world is overall less innovative when compared to other dishes and it does not go through many circles of reinvention (e.g. pizza had its Chicken BBQ moment in the ‘90 to now come back to its rustic roots). Yes, we threw some arugula in the mix, but I have not seen anything new in the last 10 years. I am for one surprised that I do not see many attempts at utilizing fermented vegetables/building on other cuisines (Kimchi or sauerkraut salads)
January 31st, 2010 at 3:03 am
How I can tell I am a born & bred Californio
Even back in the 1950s, both “salad” and “salad dressing” had to have a further identifier. For example “salad dressing” had to be disambiguated by…hmmn now I don’t remember if my mother & grandmothers said “vinaigrette” or just “vinegar dressing”. However, relative to salad, “Thousand Island salad” meant a wedge of iceberg with the aforementioned dressing (and was not often served by my father ordered it every time in a restaurant). “Tossed” meant a combination of leafy greens, dressed with a vinagrette. Croutons were optional. “Cucumber salad” meant peeled, sliced cucumbers combined with Bermuda onions and marinated at least overnight in a vinaigrette.
There’s a family ur-salad, which does require iceberg lettuce. For every head of iceberg, you need 2 ripe avocados, a 12 ounce can of mandarin oranges, a bunch of scallions, and about a quarter cup of red wine vinegar vinaigrette, made with good quality olive oil. Tear up the lettuce (slicing is anathema), seed and dice the avocados, drain the oranges, and slice the scallions, includng about a quarter of the green stems. Combine and toss in a giant bowl, add the vinaigrette and toss again. Serve until it is all gone.
January 31st, 2010 at 2:49 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Taylor Davidson, Grant McCracken, Carrie Schneider, Santi Chacon, Dominika Mastalska and others. Dominika Mastalska said: By their lettuce, you shall know them :: Grant McCracken http://bit.ly/9PAtSv [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 3:39 pm
What changed first is America’s idea of what it meant to be American. In the fifties, Italian was “ethnic”. Italian-Americans lived in Little Italies, and were largely excluded from access to the upper echelons of power. But by the Godfather era, an Italian story could be experienced as an American story – perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, its insistence on its Italian-ness. This was the first necessary condition for the Caesar Salad to be accepted in all its assertive garlic, anchovy and parmesan glory.
Then, we need to consider Julia Child. The story has been told by others, but the key outcome was that cuisine, rather than mere cooking, had become the cultural currency of the striving middle class.
Next, we need to consider the rise of health culture. Fat and calories, vitamins and antioxidants and micronutrients…food was now “about” something else entirely. Eating has always had its religious dimension, but the idea of “healthy eating” took the modern language of science and fused it told deep structure of “purity” and “contamination”. As a result, the very word “salad” held positive connotations at the moral level. In fact, its moral resonance was so strong, it could act like a medieval plenary indulgence, wiping out the sins of egg and cheese and crunchy fried crutons. This was not bad food – it couldn’t be! It was a salad.
So the Caesar Salad was cuisine without being foreign, indulgent without being immoral. And since it was in its origins a “fusion” dish, it could make itself at home on just about any restaurant menu. (And how many proprietors were going to quibble about authenticity when the dish also carried such impressive profit margins?)
February 1st, 2010 at 3:21 pm
The success of the iceberg salad also has somewhat to do with the fact that it was flavorless. It’s all water practically. It’s basically a vehicle for the dressing you put on it. It was customizable to your liking and fit in well with the industrialization of food.
The Caesar is decidedly more flavorful, so that helps in popularity. Additionally the general landscape was changing in terms of ethnic cooking. Ethnic food has exploded from a town having a Chinese joint and a pizza parlor to even relatively small towns having Mediterranean, Indian, Irish, Italian, Korean, and Sushi joints. A Caesar salad looks downright stuffy among that crowd, but just interesting enough to distinguish itself and entice folks eating at Applebees.
Also, it should be noted that the technical ability to grow and ship these leafier kinds of lettuce took some giant steps forward in that time. Michael Pollan talks a bit about this in Omnivore’s Dilemma.
February 1st, 2010 at 4:29 pm
I suggest romaine took off because of three cultural shifts:
1. The diversification of American cuisine, which began in earnest in the 1970s. Until that point (unless you lived in a major city), foods such as bagels, pizza, and burritos were considered exotic ethnic fare and did not appear on most Americans’ tables for dinner. At some point the cultural inclusiveness of the 1960s-70s make engaging with new tastes possible. Bagel stores appeared in rural Vermont in the 1980s. Indian and Chinese restaurants spread from cities into suburbs. New tastes were in.
2. At this same time, new national chains of upscale restaurants made meals slightly above the fare of McDonald’s consistent and affordable. Bennigans, Chilis, T.G.I.F. — they were everywhere with standardized, better menus with better salads. This is noteworthy because such restaurant chains rapidly copy each others’ advances in menus.
3. Finally, Americans’ craze for fitness began in earned in the 1970s as well. Nike began telling us to Go Do It. We started caring more about what we eat (even if we still struggle with the conflicts of sugar, salt and obesity).
Diversification of culture made us open to romaine. Desire for fitness made us want romaine. And market entrance of upscale-yet-affordable chains allowed the romaine meme to spread. Yum.
February 1st, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Because as the American Empire grows, so to does the desire to partake in the tastes of the Romans. We have the coliseums, the gladiatorial combat, the detached proletariat, why not the cuisine?
And as for why iceberg lettuce is shrinking in prestige? Easy. Global warming.
February 1st, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Here in Tijuana, romaine (”orejona”) is associated with Mexican cuisine and iceberg (”bola” or ¡”romana”!) is associated with U.S. cuisine. It’s doubtful that Tijuana had even seen any crisphead lettuces at the time the Caesar salad was invented. To tell you the truth, I had always thought that iceberg was developed in the Central Valley during the 1940s for the very reasons that Mr McCracken gives. Most of the produce in the U.S. since WWII has been developed for durability and color at the expense of flavor.
A couple of years ago I was talking with the last maître d’ of Caesar’s Bar and Grill about the origin of the salad. He gave me a version of the “Aviators’ Salad” story as gospel. A few of his details glowed with verisimilitude. He said that César ran the front of the house and Alex the kitchen. One night, after the kitchen had closed, some folks who had just landed at the Agua Caliente airstrip showed up asking for supper: Alex obliged by rousing through the prep scraps to see what might make a good combination.
The “prep scraps” bit explains why the romaine would be slightly wilted, torn by hand, and devoid of veins (which would have been used for stock). The aviators would be proto-RatPack glitterati from Hollywood. Such a salad would certainly have been coöpted for tableside preparation by anyone theatrical enough to run the front of the house. And such an origin might explain why both brothers claimed bragging rights.
(This is, however, only one of several competing gospels. Next door to the Hotel Caesar, a place called alternately Caesar’s Palace and Le Drug Store used to display a large poster of Rosa Cardini’s version, in which the salad jumps full-grown from César’s head on July 4, 1924. And Diana Kennedy tells Alex’s own story, in which he named the salad for pilots at the Rockwell Field Air Base on Coronado Island.)
When the Tijuana economy tanked during the last Depression, Alex opened a restaurant in Mexico City and César (now Caesar or back to Cesare) started selling bottled salad dressings in Los Angeles. So southern California has known the Caesar salad, at least in its commercial form, continuously since 1935. Why should it suddenly be lionized by fast food in the late ’70s, you ask? For that we probably have Rosa to thank. According to the Daily Telegraph, “Rosa Cardini *** turned the salad dressing created by her father, Caesar, into *** a million-dollar business.” She couldn’t have pulled that off by giving Sinatra tableside service but she could certainly have done it by striking a deal with Foodmaker Corp.
The best Caesar salad I’ve ever had was Michel Richard’s when he was in the Hotel Rex, San Francisco. Composed in the kitchen, it was served in an edible shell (in lieu of croutons) baked with Parmigiano-Reggiano. A far cry from the ritual of the great wooden bowl. Few waiters are trained for tableside service any more: it seems we get our spectacle nowadays from the mise en place and the size of the check.
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:12 pm
There’s so much more to the world of lettuce than most of us realize. Lettuce is not just Iceberg or Romaine. It’s Australian Yellow, Black Seeded Simpson, Deer Tongue, Forellenschluss, Grandpa Admire’s, Lollo Rosso, Oak Leaf, Salad Bowl – and the list goes on.
I’m a big fan of Iceberg, an heirloom lettuce, introduced by Burpee in the 1890’s, if my memory serves. Its time has come again. Cut in wedges and drenched in blue cheese and buttermilk dressing, Iceberg is a mainstay of my summer diet. Whatever it may lack in snob appeal, it makes up for in sheer deliciousness, especially when accompanied by an heirloom tomato such as Fordhook First. Pull down the blinds and try it!
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Caesar salads flourished and continue to flourish for different reasons at different times.
- Initially, because they were different/innovative. The salad’s ingredients differed, and it contained Romaine Lettuce not “Iceberg.” Iceberg Lettuce was more commonly served– maybe even, boring.
- As mentioned, “Iceberg” Lettuce was served more due to distribution. (I think of the movie ‘East of Eden,’ in the scene where they were trying to ship all the lettuce from Salinas in frozen railroad cars and all the ice melted.) Well, at some point, refrigerated railcars were successful. Combined with trucking, “Iceberg” Lettuce was all over the country.
- Secondly, if the Ceasar Salad originated in TJ, it’s very likely that it gathered ‘star power’ behind it. Stars of that day liked to visit and party in Mexico, and many things become “Hollywoodized” in the U.S. At some point, folks across the country probably wanted to dine like the stars by emulating them and trying something different.
- Plus, California has always been known for its vegetation / salads. I think most of our lettuce comes from CA. It’s also been known for its farm workers and fruit pickers. During the late 60s and early 70s, another “Caesar,” this one spelled, “César;” César Chávez, called for boycotts on grapes and “Iceberg” Lettuce. Who knows? Maybe that boycott created an opening for competing heads of lettuce like Romaine. So, it may’ve been a politically correct time to adopt this salad into regional menus.
- The fact that salads are nutritious, and popular in Cali also may’ve gathered momentum and fused with another popular, local trend called bodybuilding, which also entered Hollywood around the same time as the boycott with guys like Steve Reeves, and later Arnold Schwarzenneger, Stallone, etc.
- Today, rather than appealing to bodybuilders or those favoring organic foods, we see more restaurants, including QSRs/FFRs, offering healthier options like Caesar Salads for the average Joe as a likely reaction to the nation’s high numbers in obesity and diabetes. Possibly seeking to get on the ‘right side’ of the issue as they’re reminded of what happened with Tobacco.
Plus, I think Caesar Salads taste pretty good.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:51 pm
It’s clear that “eating out” meant something vastly more significant than it does now. Special events were the reasons for going to a restaurant, and especially a “fine” restaurant, in the 50’s and 60’s. The “show” of preparing a special salad at Table-side was a tangible signal of the effort of the restaurant, on the diners behalf (what happened in the kitchen remained a secret).
I suspect that Caesar salad maintained the same cultural signal it did when it moved from the restaurant to the home kitchen – it signaled that the meal was going to be “special” thanks to the effort the hostess (sorry for the stereotype) was to taking prepare the meal. In an era when most meals were prepared and eaten at home, the effort of preparing a Caesar salad was actually a fairly easy way to innovate – and still be able to rely on the tried-and-true family recipes for main courses, etc. It showed that you cared, and yet it only required specific ingredients, and not culinary training to pull off successfully. Secret recipes for Caesar Salad are probably more a matter of repeating what worked, rather than technological breakthroughs.
While the context has certainly changed (McDonald’s?), the signal is the same. The cachet of “special” still seems attached, even as the salad has been adapted so widely in so many variations. Despite the absence of the table-side flourishes, when I see it listed on a menu (with other salad choices), Caesar still implies special.