"Great Caesar's Ghost!" The Caesar Salad is 100 Years Old

Stealing a line from Perry White of Superman fame, I was amazed to find that on July 4th 2024, the Caesar Salad had turned 100. 

Even though I lived on a farm growing up (the 1960's), our salad options focused on the iceberg variety. That's strange because we raised a lot of things but not salad greens. My mom prepared sliced cucumbers and onions in vinegar and sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper. I guess you could count them as salads but if you are talking greens, we only had iceberg and it was purchased at the store. 

It was that way in college too. I went to school in eastern North Carolina. Their culinary claim to fame was pork barbecue not salad. I worked in a restaurant part-time and their salad green of choice was always iceberg. It wasn't until I moved to Virginia Beach and started working at the Copper Kettle Restaurant that I saw salad greens other than iceberg. 

It was at the Copper Kettle Restaurant that my buddy Rat and I were taught to make Caesar Salad tableside by the Maitre'd Earl Branche. He had learned at the Nations Room at the Golden Triangle Hotel in Norfolk. I'm sure this Caesar Salad preparation originated from Tommy Seay, Bobby Gordon or Monroe Duncan. They worked the front of the house at the Nations Room but created a lot of the recipes and preparations. Rat and I refined our versions over the years and have both used the salad in all our restaurants. You can't beat perfection. 

We were taught to start with an unfinished wooden salad bowl about twenty inches in diameter. There are eleven items in the dressing and this is more of a list than an exact recipe. In the bottom of this bowl, you put two cloves of garlic and crushed them with a spoon and fork, rubbing the essence into the wood. With the spoon you scrap up the residue and discard it. You then add two or three anchovy fillets and smash them with the spoon and fork into a paste. Next add a tablespoon of dijon mustard, a couple splashes of worcestershire sauce, a dash of Tabasco, a couple splashes of red wine vinegar, the juice of one lemon, several turns of black pepper from a large peppermill, a couple tablespoons of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and a one minute coddled egg. 

All the additions are done with flair. You are putting on a show. Everything is vigorously stirred together with the spoon and fork. Then the extra virgin olive oil is added in a slow stream making an emulsion. You take a small spoon and taste the dressing and correct any shortcomings. 

Then the romaine leaves are added. Only the hearts, the inner leaves, are used, 6 to 8 per person and they are left whole. Freshly made croutons (French bread cut in 3/4 inch cubes, tossed with garlic infused olive oil and toasted) and additional Parmigiano Reggiano cheese are added. Everything is tossed to coat the lettuce and then placed on a chilled plate. It is served with a chilled fork as well. 

Just about every recipe or culinary technique has been done before. Not many are original to the writer of the recipe or technique. Unless you are talking molecular gastronomy which is more about science and art than about real food. To my way of thinking, it satisfies the eye and the mind not necessarily the stomach or the soul. 

There are several stories as to where the Caesar Salad actually originated and who was the creator. The most predominant being it originated at Caesar's Place, Callejón del Travieso (Alley of the Wicked) in Tijuana, Mexico on July 4th 1924. Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant and owner of the restaurant was the creator. Tijuana was a hopping place back then with liquor, wild women, horse racing and gambling. The Volstead Act, the noble experiment, prevented liquor from being legally consumed in the United States but that wasn't the case across the border in Mexico. The rich and famous all flocked to Tijuana to party. 

The story goes that this was a particularly busy night and the restaurant was running out of food. Caesar went back in the kitchen and took stock of what they had left. One item they had a lot of was romaine lettuce. With other items, he concocted a salad to be eaten with the fingers. Being a showman, he put everything on a cart and rolled it into the dining room and prepared the salad tableside. His customers were delighted. Thus was born the Caesar Salad.  

Other stories say Alex Cardini, Caesar's brother created it, ex-partners Paul Maggiora and Peter Frigerio created it, ex-employee Livio Santini says it was a recipe of his mother's and Caesar stole it from him. There is even a story that it was first created in 1903 in Chicago by a chef named Giacomo Junia and named after Julius Caesar. There are scores of people and places that say they were the first to come up with the Caesar Salad. 

It is one of the most popular salads in the restaurant world, right up there with the tossed garden salad. It is on the menu of tens of thousands of restaurants, in every part of this country and the world. 

Two food historians, from Tijuana, spent eight long years researching theories and investigating the testimonies of relevant witnesses and concluded that it was Caesar Cardini who created the salad in 1924. Of course, they both had a vested interest in this conclusion. 

Rosa Cardini, Caesar's daughter, constantly publicized Caesar's version of the story in the press, to the point that after a while no one questioned it. Of course, she had a vested interest too. After Prohibition was lifted and gambling outlawed in Mexico, Caesar moved to Los Angeles and was bottling his salad dressing and selling it commercially. After he died in 1956, Rosa took over the company and turned it into a multimillion dollar business. She trademarked the names, "Original Caesar's" and "Cardini". She couldn't trademark "Caesar Salad" because by this time it was too well known in the public domain.  

Over the years, I have seen Caesar Salad recipes in countless cookbooks and prepared on hundreds of television shows. They are all a little different but usually stick with the preparation Rat and I learned at the Copper Kettle. However there is one exception to this.

It is Julia Child's version of this recipe. I have been a fan of hers since the beginning of my food career. I have all of her cookbooks and have watched a number of her different cooking shows on television. As a child in 1925 or 1926, she traveled to Tijuana and to Caesar's Place with her parents. They  had the Caesar Salad made tableside by Caesar himself. Years later, she got the original recipe from Rosa Cardini. I have seen this recipe in other places as well.

The recipe is unique by what is left out compared to the recipe Rat and I  learned. There are no anchovies, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, or Tabasco. In her description, the romaine leaves used are only the hearts and they are left whole. They are the first thing added to the wooden salad bowl and the other dressing  ingredients are added on top. 

The idea of making the dressing on top of the leaves rather than making the dressing first and then adding the leaves make this a very different preparation. The extra virgin olive oil is added to the leaves first and they are tossed to evenly coat them. Then comes salt and several grinds of black pepper. Because there are no anchovies there needs to be a little salt added. The leaves are tossed again to distribute the salt and pepper. Then comes the lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. A few more tosses and then the coddled egg is added. Again making sure the leaves are well coated. Then the leaves are topped with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and the croutons and given a final toss. The only time garlic is used is in the preparation of the croutons. They are tossed in a garlic infused olive oil and toasted. 

The only hint of anchovy comes from the Worcestershire sauce and the only hint of garlic is from the croutons. Therefore, this preparation is much lighter than the one Rat and I use. There is no chilled plate or chilled fork. The salad is meant to be eaten with the fingers. How decadent, but perfectly understandable in the wild party culture of 1920's Tijuana. 

By the time Caesar got around to making his bottled dressing, some changes had been made. I have tasted the bottled sauce and there is definitely anchovies, vinegar and Dijon mustard in there. 

There was a lot of upheaval, bankruptcies and fires in 1920's and 1930's Tijuana. Caesar had to move his location a few times. He ended up building a hotel and restaurant at 1059 Avenida Revolución that opened in 1930. Most people associate that location with Caesar and his salad. Although he is long gone, the hotel and restaurant is still there. They still serve Caesar Salad. It is now run by the Grupo Plascencia. 

The preparation they make is almost identical to mine other than they don't use Tabasco or red wine vinegar. Also they only use the yolk of the egg and use limes instead of lemons. Limes are much more common than lemons in much of Latin America and are called "Limones". The use of lemons in most recipes could be the result of a translation error. They also only serve one large crouton cut from a baguette rather than several small cubes.

I make the dressing in a blender now and use limes. I make a lot and keep the excess in a container in the refrigerator. I have a Caesar Salad about once a week either for lunch or dinner. I share the recipe with whoever wants it. I have given it to scores of people and it always includes eleven ingredients.   

Three years before Cardini's death in 1956, the Master Chefs of the 'International Society of Epicures' in Paris proclaimed Caesar's Salad as "the greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in 50 years." You can't beat perfection.