My significant other ate cucumbers and onion with some ranch. I called it a cucumber onion salad. She says there aren’t enough ingredients to call it a salad, because “it takes multiple ingredients”. I pointed out she had three and asked what the minimum is. She refuses to answer so I ask Lemmy.
Lettuce alone is sufficient, but not necessary. As soon as you omit lettuce it takes multiple ingredients.
My nana calls that the “honeymoon salad”, lettuce alone
Ha! You beat me to it. My dad loved that joke.
“Do you have honeymoon salad?”
“What’s honeymoon salad?”
“Lettuce alone, without dressing.”
That’s a terrible honeymoon.
More like, “been married for 30 years salad”, amirite?? /BoomerHumor
I mean, the lettuce might be wilted but as long as you wash it I guess it’s fine. Not like they’ve been feasting, so they’re probably famished.
So teeeeechnically, a salad is a dish composed of mixed ingredients. You could make the argument that you mix any two set of chopped ingredients and bingo bongo, it’s a salad.
However, I like to think that dishes’ ingredients aren’t a taxonomic thing, they’re a probabilistic thing. In other words, there’s no such thing as “not salad” or “salad”, only shades of saladness.
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Serve it cold? Ok it’s saladier
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It’s made up of chopped ingredients? Saladier still
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Those ingredients are mostly vegetables? Getting pretty saladish
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They’re mixed together? Even more salad like
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They’ve got some sort of dressing mixed in? Now it’s very likely a salad!
… and so on. To me, your SO’a dish has a pretty high Salad Probability^tm
Is there anyway to convert a Salad Probability^tm into a Salad Factor score?
Give me weights for the coefficients and I’ll construct a matrix
Here’s some example weights for a salad factor
Lettuce - 10
Spinach - 9
Arugula - 7
Cabbage - 7
Tomato- 6
Carrots- 6
Cucumber - 5
Onion - 4
Olives (black) 4
Anchovies - 1
“Saladier” is my new favorite word of the day.
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Well, the cube rule of food says anything without a starch/bread is a salad, if you want an absurd authority to point to: https://cuberule.com/
Looks at breakdown of the cube rule: Yeah, okay. That all makes perfect sense.
Looks at examples that follow the cube rule: YOU MONSTERS!!
This is hilarious! What a beautiful, pointless discussion! I love it! 🤣
So steak or chocolate are salads and a salad is a nacho, got it!
Potato salad is sad now
I think 1 ingredient can be a salad as long as it’s a very salady ingredient.
Lettuce?
Lettuce IS the salad.
It’s literally called salad (Salat) in German.
How about spinach?
Yeah that gives me salad vibes
I would probably still call dressing on just lettuce a salad, although I would say it’s an unusually basic one. 3 ingredients definitely counts.
Dressing already needs at least 3
By some definitions of ingredient, I see what you’re saying, although it might be a simple vinaigrette with two individually obtainable ingredients. However, OP implied they consider dressing one ingredient in the OP, so I went by identity previous to tossing as opposed to identity at any stage of the process.
If pasta fucking salad can be a thing, so can this.
lettuce in a bowl is salad.
To me, it has to have dressing. Otherwise it’s just lettuce in a bowl.
Pop a drizzle of oil on it? BOOM SALD
Quick edit: plug for saladguy12, who just hit DAY TWO THOUSAND
Can we first define “salad”?
If it’s cold ingredients, mixed together, then wilted iceberg lettuce and a gas station dressing packet is salad.
So two.
It doesn’t even have to be cold. Look at pasta salad, or anything with grilled chicken or fresh croutons.
German potato salad is served hot. A salad is literally just any ingredients mixed together.
I‘m German and have eaten a lot of potato salad during my entire life. Not once has it been served hot
Not hot but „lauwarm“ or „lukewarm“ is very typical for same day fresh potato salad
At least down here in the south
Can’t imagine potato salad with either vinegar or mayo tasting good hot
it’s a salad, it’s just a terrible one
Cucumber and onion with a vinaigrette though is a delicious salad.
Potato salad is often just potatoes with chives and Mayonnaise. Your SO is chatting shit imho.
I grew up with the notion that chopped tomato sprinkled with coarse salt is a salad.
All you need is lettuce and salt. “Salad” is derived from the latin for salt: sal
You can make tomato salad with just tomato and onion.
Carrot salad is just shredded carrots with dressing made from mustard mixed with oil, but I’d challenge you to take a bite of that and tell me it’s not a salad.
Now mix up uncut baby carrots, celery sticks, cherry tomatoes, and cucumber slices. I’ll give you a bowl of ranch, and if you pour it in try to eat it like a salad instead of using them as dip, there’s something wrong with you
Salads aren’t about ingredient counts, they’re about preparation
One vegetable and dressing is enough if you need a utensil to eat it. Example: cucumber salad.
