Hail Caesar Emperor of salads and ruler
of Mexico. That's right,
the Caesar salad was actually invented in Tijuana Mexico,
and I'm going to do my best to make that original version of my favorite salad from the 1920s.
So thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring this video as we make the original caesar salad... maybe,
this time on Tasting History.
So like so many dishes out there and lots of cocktails as well
lots of people in different places have tried to take credit for inventing the caesar salad.
Most people do agree that it was made first in Tijuana Mexico but even then
there's still a lot of controversy about exactly how it all went down
probably in the 1920s and the first written version wasn't done until the 1940s.
It's from a 1946 article called 'The Voice of Broadway'.
"The big food rage in Hollywood- the Caesar salad
will be introduced to New Yorkers by Gilmore's Steak House. It's an intricate concoction that takes
ages to prepare and contains (zowie!) lots of garlic, raw or slightly coddled eggs,
croutons, romaine, anchovies, parmesan cheese, olive oil, vinegar, and plenty of black pepper."
But she's not describing that original Tijuana salad there. She is describing a version that was going to be made
in New York and they're very similar but there are some key differences most notably anchovies.
That's right the original caesar salad by all accounts did not have anchovies,
in fact it's purported creator Caesar who it's named after was rather insistent that there were no anchovies.
Instead he had Worcestershire sauce added and said that all the anchovy flavor necessary came from that.
So in an effort to make the original caesar salad based on his recollections as well as those of his daughter:
what you'll need is: about two cups of cubed day-old Italian bread,
two cloves of crushed garlic, and three to four tablespoons of olive oil.
So that is for the croutons and if you have a little bit too much bread or not quite enough or
too much garlic or whatever, it doesn't matter all of the ingredients in this recipe are kind of up to you,
up to your taste. Even today they make it tableside at the restaurant where it was originally done.
They're just throwing things in. Nobody's doing any measurements so you don't need to either.
For the dressing you'll need: two cloves of garlic crushed, two-thirds cup or 160 milliliters or more of extra virgin olive oil,
and on Caesar's insistence that olive oil does need to be imported from Italy.
Granted he's not here so if you don't have that it doesn't doesn't really matter but he also says the same thing
about the quarter cup or about 25 grams of freshly grated parmigiano reggiano cheese.
Then two medium heads of romaine lettuce, a half teaspoon of kosher salt, one large egg yolk,
plenty of fresh ground black pepper, the juice of one lime.
So a lot of people actually use lemon instead of lime and that probably stems from a translation error
because in Mexico they call limes 'limon' and so you know Americans heard limon and thought oh lemon and so
now it's usually lemon, but it should be a lime.
And then two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and that word Worcestershire I feel like it causes a lot of stress
especially with Americans nobody ever says it with a lot of gusto it's like
Worte-sista-shiste-shire
And I feel like most the confusion comes from the first part of the word
Worcester is pronounced 'woster'
because no English place name ever
sounds the way that it's written.
Belvoir castle, Cholmondeley,
it's something that really stresses me out when I go to Britain which when this episode airs I will actually be in Scotland
so to prepare myself for the eventual embarrassment of pronouncing things wrong, but
to try to get better as well as to help plan my trip
I have been watching 'The Great Tours' on Wondrium who happens to be our sponsor.
Wondrium formerly The Great Courses Plus never fails when it comes to finding a course
to teach me about whatever it is I want to learn.
Now usually I'm watching courses on history or food but this course is actually about travel,
and the course was perfect for helping me plan out my
because not only does the professor tell you about different places to see, some very famous,
and some a little bit more off the beaten path but he also gives little anecdotes about each one
many of which are historical.
Like a story about the Scottish Border Reavers who were constantly raiding villages around Medieval Glasgow,
and the Archbishop's decision in 1525 to curse them.
"I cursed their head, and all the hairs on their head. I curse their face, their eyes, their mouth,
their nose, their tongue, their teeth, their skulls, their shoulders...."
He actually continues this for quite some time basically going all the way down to the soles of their feet,
and it seems to be a rather slow acting curse seeing as the Border Reavers were
around raiding for about another hundred years.
So next time you're planning a trip or frankly any time you want to learn pretty much anything
just visit wondrium.com/tastinghistory or click the link in the description to start your free trial.
That's wondrium.com/tastinghistory.
Now let's make this salad.
So first take the romaine lettuce and cut off the base, then strip away the outer leaves until you get to the nice crisp romaine hearts.
You'll need about 20 of them in all, then wash them well
and then put them into the refrigerator for at least an hour uncovered so that they dry out and get nice and chilled.
Now for both the croutons and the salad itself you want to get a very big bowl, they use a big wooden bowl at the restaurant,
doesn't need to be wooden but you want it big because you're going to make a mess otherwise.
You can do it in smaller bowls, but you can do everything all in one bowl and have less to wash.
Now when it comes to the croutons the restaurant today they give you like one big crouton on top.
It's cool looking, but not very practical in my personal opinion so luckily the
original seems to have been much smaller more traditional croutons.
So to make those mix the garlic with the three to four tablespoons of olive oil, and add a pinch of salt and a crack of pepper if you want.
Then add in the bread and gently toss it until it's well coated.
Then spread it out over a lined baking sheet and put it in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit or 190 Celsius
for about 15 to 20 minutes, and if you want you can flip them over during the time but I actually haven't found it entirely necessary,
but you'll just want to make sure that they get nice and crispy.
Then in the same bowl add the other half of the garlic, and the Worcestershire sauce, the cracked pepper, the egg yolk,
the fresh lime juice, kosher salt, and mix everything together.
Then while you're stirring slowly drizzle the olive oil in. It should just be a thin thread of olive oil constantly going into the bowl.
Then add the parmesan cheese and mix that in, and finally take the dry hearts of romaine
and put them in the bowl and begin to coat them by gently turning them over and over in the dressing.
So this is when the big bowl really comes in handy otherwise you're going
to be splashing caesar dressing all over yourself especially if you have a lot of leaves in there,
and if you do have a lot of leaves it also takes a little while to kind of make sure that they're all coated.
So while Max From 20 Minutes Ago does that Max From Right Now is going to tell you the "history" of Caesar salad.
So deciding who actually invented the Caesar salad is is a little rough.
There are several claimants but most historians agree that the salad takes its name
from Caesar's restaurante bar in Tijuana Mexico.
The restaurant was opened in 1923 by an Italian immigrant named Cesar Cardini.
Interestingly enough he actually sailed over to America in May of 1913
on the RMS Olympic, sistership of the Titanic which had sunk just a year previous,
and it makes you wonder if he had sailed over just a year earlier would we have the Caesar salad.
Anyway after working in several restaurants in Sacramento and San Diego he decided to open up his own place
and he chose Tijuana for the location because with Prohibition in full swing in the States
people were flocking over the border each day to partake in a bit of recreational drinking.
On top of that gambling was actually legal in Mexico at the time so this city right across the border
was basically like the Las Vegas of the 1920s,
but even though the location of the first Caesar salad is pretty well established
who made it is not so clear because a lot of people who worked there in those early days
have laid claim to actually being the one to invent it.
There was Livio Santini who in 1924 at the age of 18
moved from Italy to Tijuana where he worked as a cook at Caesar's restaurant.
See according to him during World War I his family was put in a refugee camp in Austria,
and while they were there his mother would make what was called hard times salad, though I'm assuming in Italian.
Basically it was a salad that she would make with whatever she had available. It was olive oil, Worcestershire sauce,
wine vinegar, parmesan, and on occasion an egg.
And so he made that same salad when he started working at the restaurant.
And he says that Caesar eventually started making it tableside and
kind of took credit for the salad and that's why it was named the Caesar salad,
but to believe that you would also have to believe that a boss would take credit for something their employee did and...
I just- I don't see that happening, but the most accepted story does lie with Cardini himself.
According to his daughter it was a busy 4th of July weekend in 1924 and the restaurant saw
every item on the menu 86'd meaning that they ran out of it in restaurant speak.
Well the hungry Americans many of whom were rich famous and drunk were clamoring to be fed
so Cardini in a you know tizzy goes back into the kitchen and just grabs whatever ingredients are left and
decides to put something together, but the dish wasn't that spectacular so he had a bit of a flare for the dramatic
so he decided to take a cart out into the dining room and actually put the dish together
right there in front of everything, and he named it the Caesar salad or Caesar's salad.
So that's the story that he told his daughter and it very well could be true
though I have worked in a lot of restaurants and with a lot of restaurant owners
and the way that I imagine it probably happened was it was very busy he was frazzled,
and he went into the kitchen and went to his cook and said hey what do we have what can we put together.
His cook said hey we can we can do this, make this salad and he goes out of the dining room,
he makes it, and he says oh I made this.
But who knows maybe I'm just a cynic.
Regardless of how it actually happened Caesar's name did end up on that salad,
but that might not actually be the Caesar salad that ended up becoming really popular
because shortly after its creation Caesar's brother Alex came to work at the restaurant.
Alex took that salad and added in some anchovies and possibly some dijon mustard,
and he changed the way that it was served. Originally
it was served basically big pieces of lettuce with the stems on the outside in a circle on a plate, and then everybody took it
by hand and ate it kind of like a lettuce wrap or something,
and you know he was like
people don't like eating salad with their hands, I imagine, and so he said no we're gonna get this forks.
This new method of serving along with the anchovies, and maybe some other ingredients added
became known as the aviator salad because Alex had been quite the pilot in World War I,
and eventually story goes that it became far more popular than the Caesar salad so
Caesar changed the name of the aviator salad to the Caesar salad and yeah,
I believe that because it's all about Caesar.
But this is the salad that movie stars like WC Fields and Clark Gable popularized
and Caesar's became the place to be seen and years later the great Julia Child wrote
"One of my early remembrances of restaurant life was going to Tijuana in 1925 or 1926 with my parents,
who were wildly excited that they should finally lunch at Caesar's restaurant... my parents of course, ordered the salad.
Caesar himself rolled the big card up to the table, tossed their romaine in a great wooden bowl,
and I wish I could say I remembered his every move, but I don't...
It was a sensation of a salad from coast to coast, and there were even rumblings of its success in Europe."
And you're welcome for not making you listen to that entire thing in my Julia Child impression.
Now legend has it that the way that the salad got to Europe was via Wallis Simpson,
future wife of King Edward VIII once he abdicated of course.
She's also often credited for being the one to request that it be
cut up into smaller pieces of lettuce making it easier and a little bit more dainty to eat with a fork,
and frankly I'm all about that. And even the master chefs of the International Society of Epicures in Paris
voted the Caesar salad as the "greatest recipe to originate from the Americas in fifty years."
And I am tempted to agree with them except that I have not tried this version of the salad,
and so I reserve judgment until I have done so.
So once you've coated the romaine in the dressing
set several pieces on a chilled plate, and top with a bit more parmesan cheese, and the croutons
and here we are one possible version of the original Caesar salad.
I do have to say eating like huge leaves like this kind of weird I agree with Wallis Simpson or
whoever decided that it needed to be cut up because it needs to be cut up, but what doesn't need to be cut up
are the croutons. I'm gonna try one of those first because I freaking love croutons.
CRUNCH
Now that is some crunch.
Those are fantastic. I mean there's just a little bit of garlic, like that hint of garlic,
but it's not overwhelming. It's not like garlic bread... but a little bit like garlic bread.
Now for the salad itself I could use a fork, be a little bit more civilized,
but originally you picked up the whole thing of lettuce so that's what I'm going to do.
Here we go.
It's actually pretty easy to eat that way.
It's really nice it's super light- like
I mean obviously there's a ton of oil in it but it doesn't feel oily it feels really light, and there is
this spice to it that I usually don't find in in many modern Caesar salads.
Usually I feel like because I like a creamy Caesar probably so it's it's much more subtle.
I think it's coming from that Worcestershire sauce but it doesn't taste like anchovies at all,
so if you really like the flavor of anchovies you'll want to add anchovy paste or chopped up anchovies,
but this is really great. I don't think it really needs the anchovies.
This is just different I suppose.
So especially compared to like just a plain vinaigrette, and if you look at salad dressing recipes from like the
late 1900s, early 20th century they're all pretty pretty basic.
This actually is a real step up so I can see why it really caught on and was so popular.
So I think that this version of the salad is really perfect for summer. Like I said it's really nice and light.
You could put some chicken on it or whatever to spruce it up but really it doesn't need it.
It's a whole meal on itself. I feel like i could eat all 20 leaves of of lettuce that's how that's how light it is.
Anyway make sure to follow me on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller also
check out our second channel KETCHUP WITH MAX AND JOSE. We do some behind the scenes stuff a little bit more about like
my personal life and all that kind of stuff, nothing too salacious, but yeah!
Anyway check it out. I'll put a link in the description and I will see you next time on Tasting History.