Etiquette of a Salad Course

A consensus, if one could be reached, would indicate that for formal affairs it is preferable to serve the salad as the opening course while for simple family dinners it is easier, and therefore more desirable, to serve it with the main course.

Where Does Salad Belong in Dinner?  

Opinions of Experts Clash on Point

Where does the salad belong in the dinner?

Books on table etiquette will tell you. But etiquette, you will find, knows nothing about geography. Even in the far western states which, for years, have championed the salad as the first course, opinions are at a divergence.

Recently, members of the staff of the Safeway Stores Homemakers’ bureau, which is sponsoring its course in “Kitcheneering,” were interviewed as to their individual preferences. At the conclusion of the interview, the voting stood 12 in favor of opening the meal with the salad to nine favoring salads served with the main course, and with but one of the Safeway home economists holding out for a salad to be served following the main course, and then, only in case of a fruit salad to replace dessert.

According to Julia Lee Wright, director of the homemakers’ bureau and one of the West's leading authorities on table etiquette, many interesting reasons were given for individual preferences. One of the bureau’s home economists stated, for example, that she preferred a salad served first in order to “whet the appetite.” while another observed that, in her opinion, it is better to serve the salad as a part of the main course since, to serve it first, “dulls the appetite.”

According to Mrs. Wright, a consensus, if one could be reached, would indicate that for formal affairs it is preferable to serve the salad as the opening course while for simple family dinners it is easier, and therefore more desirable, to serve it with the main course. “Whenever you choose to serve it, however,” said Mrs. Wright, “whether you follow etiquette books or your personal desires, the salad has become a highly important part of the daily diet, and one that is subject perhaps to more variations than any other part of the dinner with the possible exception of desserts. 

As a result, the Safeway Stores Homemakers’ bureau features salad in its course in ‘Kitcheneering’ with due attention to its importance. Visitors to this three- day cooking school will find, we believe, a number of delightfully different salads demonstrated, and each one surprisingly easy to make.” 

–a Second Debut of an article from the San Bernardino Sun, 1934

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

New Lettuce (aka Salad) Forks

A salad fork on the left and gilded lettuce forks (shown with a matching lettuce spoon on the right.) Lettuce forks and spoons soon became attached and were then known as “salad tongs.” The writer clearly had the two confused and also had no idea that salad forks were first introduced to the public in 1885.
Lettuce forks are for serving lettuce, thus the length of up to 9” and longer. Salad forks are a bit shorter than dinner forks. The gilded Towle salad fork above was also marketed as a “pickle fork,” however many salads were pickled up until fresh lettuce and greens, along with other perishable vegetables and fruits, were widely available in markets and as more people acquired refrigerators in their homes. This made fresh, green salads more popular and seen on more tables.

AN EDITORIAL writer in the Los Angeles Times sees a brighter future for Imperial valley lettuce growers as a result of the recent invention of a new table tool designated to simplify the problem of eating lettuce salad.

The Western Growers Protective association is given credit for introducing the new lettuce fork to a public that has been trying for several years to devise a graceful method of devouring lettuce leaves.

Probably our former fellow-townsman, C. B. Moore, had something to do with this. If he did, we ought to erect a monument to C. В.

FOLLOWING is the Times editorial:
"Not content with starting new religions and new architecture and new styles for the flappers, California has invented a new lettuce fork with a blade attachment to cut succulent salads. We are inventing a new etiquette to go with it.

"This naturally cuts the old-timers to the quick. We grow more lettuce in Imperial valley than anywhere else on the globe and something just had to be done so that so much of it would not be left on the plate. The Western Protective Association has taken the heroic initiative in the matter.

"Heretofore it was regarded in good form to twist the salad into a large gob and thrust it into the maw even as the hayfork jams the grass into the mow of the barn. Not even the best circles could see anything pleasant in the struggle to drape one's facial foliage around these large, unwieldy quantities of fodder.

"But with this new trick salad fork, with a combination like the old jackknife with a corkscrew and fifty-seven other varieties of tools, we are able to inhale lettuce with comfort and stimulate another of California's products.

"THE silversmiths are also said to be backing the innovation and that means that the best families will lend themselves to the cause. For many of them have stock in the concern or have mines and will be pleased to have old cutlery out of date.

"California has taken the orange out of the Christ- mas stocking and got it on the breakfast table. For a time it was in peril of being put up in prescriptions like spinach by the doctors; but it has turned the corner and can be gedunked at the soda fountains. The whole country is alkalizing its system by orange juice and we are picking the profits for our purses.

"Once we got the world full of prunes; but it woke up one morning and turned to fruit cocktail instead. It got grapefruit in its eye and hope in its heart. The great question a few years back was how to eat an orange. But now the spiffy are acquiring lettuce forks and the price of sterling silver is about to take a sudden advance."– By R.H. In the Calexico Chronicle, 1930

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

The Etiquette of Gilded Age Salads

Due to the diversity of salads available in Western or European dining, salad forks were rather late to the table as a proper implement for dining. The first known “salad” fork was created in 1885. Prior to that time, salads were eaten with regular table forks, which had very little differentiation of tines. Lettuce knives or “salad knives” arrived on dining tables after 1926.
Above— Three different sterling salad forks, with distinctly different tines, all designed to pick up several different sizes, shapes and textures comprising a salad. The Towle Empire pattern salad fork has gilded tines, making it even more beautiful and more functional.

The term salad is applied to certain cold dishes composed either of meats, fish or vegetables. For generations, these have been served with a mixture of oil and vinegar, or oil, egg and vinegar. The oil furnishes the fatty matter for the meal, and being purely vegetable is more wholesome than the ordinary animal fats. 

Butter and cream are wholesome if taken unheated, but to make salad dressing, the butter is usually melted; hence its digestibility is destroyed, and under such circumstances a salad is robbed of its mission.

In these latter days many American cooks make a mixture of fruit, sugar and alcohol, and serve them as “salads.” These are not salads; are heavy, rather unwholesome, and will never take the place of a salad. I much prefer to call them fruit cocktails, and serve them as first course at luncheon or a twelve o'clock breakfast; or a dessert, and serve them with the ices at the close of the meal. 

Fruits mixed with mayonnaise dressing, and served as a salad are unsightly, unpalatable and a little nauseating. One cannot think of anything more out of keeping than white grapes in a thick mayonnaise. The simple so called French dressing is delicate and most worthy of recommendation. Over lettuce, cress or celery it certainly makes a palatable and wholesome dinner salad, and one in which children can be freely indulged. Such fruits as apples, pears, cherries, and pineapples, mixed with celery or lettuce, with French dressing, make an agreeable dinner salad.

A salad, simple in its construction, should be seen on every well regulated table three hundred and sixty-five times a year. Persons living in the country or on the outskirts of towns can, without cost, always pick sorrel, long dock, dandelions, and lambs’ quarters. In the city, one can, for a few pennies, buy sufficient greens for a dainty salad. 

If you cannot afford salad and dessert, choose the former by all means. The happiest closing to a real good dinner is a crisp salad well dressed, served with a bit of cheese and bread and butter or toasted cracker.

Left-over green vegetables, as beans, peas, carrots, turnips, may be used separately or mixed, dressed with French dressing, and served as a dinner salad. When you are cooking vegetables to-day for dinner, cook double the quantity, saving a portion to serve cold for to-morrow’s salad. Asparagus is much better cold than hot. Cold boiled cauliflower, carefully cooked spinach, leeks, beets, may all take their place in this delightful dish.

The Romans and Greeks used salads at the beginning of their dinner to create an appetite. In later days, however, salads are served at the end of the heavy portion of the dinner, or with the game, to bring back or sharpen the flagging appetite to the greater enjoyment of the final sweet.

The green vegetables contain the salts necessary to the well being of our blood, and oil is an important and essential food. The garlic and vinegar aid in the digestion and assimilation of other foods. In the use of garlic we must be most temperate. Rub the bottom of the bowl, or the bowl of the salad spoon. 

Bits of garlic throughout the salad are most unpleasant. Better use decided flavorings, in the form of flavored or scented vinegars. Put a few cloves of garlic into your vinegar cruet; into another, a little celery seed, or chervil; a mixture of these vinegars, or alternate use, will give variety and agreeable flavor. 

Tarragon vinegar is commonly used with mayonnaise dressing, sauce tartare, sauce Bearnaise and rich dressings of this character. Any small, fine greens that are in season, such as chives, mint, or chervil, may be finely minced and sprinkled over the dinner lettuce.

Standing at the very head of salad vegetables is the cos, or Romaine lettuce, and the ordinary delicate head lettuce, and corn salad, endive, chicory, sorrel, celery, garden and water cress, tomatoes and cucumbers. In the early spring the young tender dandelion leaves mixed with lettuce and a little carefully cooked beet root make a delightful dinner salad. Radishes, tomatoes and turnips are frequently used chopped fine, sprinkled over lettuce. 

Cauliflower, string beans, delicate shelled beans and peas, all add to the dinner salad. In the winter, cabbage and celery furnish us our daily salads. Nothing can be more delicate and delightful than the crisp, carefully cut, hard portion of a well bleached head of cabbage.

A spherical wire basket, known as a salad shaker, or drainer, is used to dry the salad materials after they have been thoroughly washed. The leaves of very curly lettuce frequently hold the water, even after shaking. Dry them with a soft piece of cheesecloth. If not dry, the dressing will not be evenly distributed.

Salads are digested largely in the small intestine. The oil contributes to the heat of the body; the small amount of vinegar aids in the digestion of other materials. —Sarah Tyson Rorer, 1898

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Salad Serving Etiquette

According to Julia Lee Wright, director of the homemakers’ bureau and one of the west’s leading authorities on table etiquette, many interesting reasons were given for individual preferences. One of the bureau’s home economists stated, for example, that she preferred a salad served first in order to “whet the appetite,” while another observed that, in her opinion, it is better to serve the salad as a part of the main course since, to serve it first, “dulls the appetite.” 

Where Does Salad Belong in Dinner? 

Opinions of Experts Clash on Point

Where does the salad belong in the dinner? Books on table etiquette will tell you. But etiquette, you will find, knows nothing about geography. Even in the far western states which, for years, have championed the salad as the first course, opinions are at a divergence. 

Recently, members of the staff of the Safeway Stores Homemakers’ Bureau, which is sponsoring its course in “Kitcheneering,” were interviewed as to their individual preferences. At the conclusion of the interview, the voting stood 12 in favor of opening the meal with the salad to nine favoring salads served with the main course, and with but one of the Safeway home economists holding out for a salad to be served following the main course, and then only in case of a fruit salad to replace dessert. 

According to Julia Lee Wright, director of the homemakers’ bureau and one of the west’s leading authorities on table etiquette, many interesting reasons were given for individual preferences. One of the bureau’s home economists stated, for example, that she preferred a salad served first in order to “whet the appetite,” while another observed that, in her opinion, it is better to serve the salad as a part of the main course since, to serve it first, “dulls the appetite.” 

According to Mrs. Wright, a consensus, if one could be reached, would indicate that for formal affairs, it is preferable to serve the salad as the opening course, while for simple family dinners, it is easier, and therefore more desirable, to serve it with the main course. “Whenever you choose to serve it, however," said Mrs. Wright, “whether you follow etiquette books or your personal desires, the salad has become a highly important part of the daily diet, and one that is subject perhaps to more variations than any other part of the dinner, with the possible exception of desserts.” — San Pedro Pilot, 1934

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Proper Etiquette of the Fork

“In eating, the fork should be used in the right hand, with the tines up—the only time it is used in the left is when it is assisting the knife in the cutting of meat.” — Unless, of course, you have a rare, left-handed fork!
(shown above, placed beside a regular fork)
— Photo, Etiquipedia’s private library

The Use of the Fork

Almost all foods are eaten with the fork, even including peas, and other dishes of semi-liquid consistency. In eating, the fork should be used in the right hand, with the tines up—the only time it is used in the left is when it is assisting the knife in the cutting of meat. Use the fork for the cutting of salad and pie or pudding. The knife is only used for meat or the spreading of butter on bread.— Pacific Rural Press, 1916

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Salad Etiquette and History

Originally, long lettuce forks and matching spoons were the proper accoutrements for serving salads in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eventually, by the mid 20th century, they became connected, made of plastic and mass marketed as “salad tongs,” though those who took much pride in entertaining, continued to use separate salad serving forks and spoons to serve their guests leafy, green salads.

To paint a complete portrait of the restaurant’s history, the iconic image of Man Carving a Roast should be accompanied by Man Mixing a Salad. For in haute restaurant-ology it is Man, not Woman, who rules the salad bowl.


In the 19th century wealthy men who styled themselves epicures often impressed their dining companions by rising from the table and mixing the salad. In the 20th century the custom passed into the hands of headwaiters at chi chi venues.

The tradition can be traced to peripatetic Frenchmen who wandered around Europe solemnly ministering to urban dinner parties with the contents of their small yet sacred chests of salad ingredients which included flavored vinegars, soy, caviar, truffles, anchovies, and other delectables.

In the 18th century sallad (spelled in the British manner) referred to a mixture of greens and herbs, possibly radishes, dressed with vinegar and oil and perhaps a raw egg. It could also mean chopped cabbage, known in the early 19th century as “cold” slaw. How many taverns, coffee houses, and other early eating places served salads is unknown but the number was probably very small and their salad days limited to springtime.

Although some green salads appeared on 19th century menus, the word salad more often referred to cold chopped meat or fish dressed with mayonnaise. Lobster and chicken were favorites. Combination salads and fruit salads did not come into popularity until the 20th century, largely due no doubt to the lower price of greens, vegetables, and imported bananas and pineapples.

The type of restaurant that did most to advance the green salad as a basic component of the American diet was the table d’hôte, a small French or Italian restaurant serving a fixed-price meal of about five courses. In 1844, patrons at the Café Tortoni in NYC enjoyed dinners of soup, stew-like entrees, roast meat, salads “mixed a la des Jardins,” and desserts. Head lettuce was rare, so typical salads featured romaine, chicory, dandelions, or field greens. Salad lovers particularly lauded Italian restaurants for their salads, both in the 19th and 20th centuries (despite the common appellation “Wop salad” ca. 1940-1970). In 1909 a patron wrote that Italian restaurant salads “are almost always good, and the dressing, made from red wine vinegar, is usually delicious. The mixed salad, in spring includes tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, celery, sometimes spinach and usually chives. Beet tops are also served as salad.”

In the New England countryside, on the other hand, salads were rare – and unsatisfactory. As a patron in a hotel dining room noted in 1881, “If by any chance there is lettuce on the table – for this happens rarely – and you manifest a desire to eat of it, the waiter puts before you the vinegar cruet and the sugar bowl. If you want to make a fool of yourself, call for salad oil. It will take some time to explain your meaning, and when you have done so the attendant will sneeringly inform her companions that ‘That feller eats grease on his lettis.’”

Although some thought salads were gaining popularity in the 1890s as sedentary city dwellers woke up to the wisdom of lighter fare, hotel cook Jessup Whitehead remarked in 1901 that “salads are not among the common popular dishes, and the average public seldom seems to think of them.” Many cooks had no idea how to prepare them, he added.


Salads became feminized in the 1920s. Perhaps it was the popularity of fruit salads in tea rooms, or the increasing use of flavored gelatin salads, but some male gourmets denounced women for preferring “comic salads” chosen for eye appeal rather than taste. Indeed there were some bizarre ones such as the Candlestick (illustrated), and others with names such as Clara Barton, Bon Ton, Butterfly, and Martini. Even a female tea room proprietor had to admit that “Atrocities have been committed in the name of salad.”

In the mid-20th century the tossed salad smothered under a layer of thick dressing became the standard start of a regulation meat and potatoes restaurant dinner. The high incidence of mediocre salads led syndicated columnist Inez Robb to launch a one-woman campaign in the 1960s against the two-pronged “red menace” to restaurant salads: chopped red cabbage and sludgy red-orange “French” dressing. Relief was on the way, for in the 1970s field greens returned, and ingredients rarely (but sometimes) found in salads of previous decades, such as olive oil, radicchio, and arugula came into wider use.–© Jan Whitaker, 2011

Jan Whitaker

We wish to thank Jan Whitaker for her allowing us to use another wonderful post from her blog. Says Jan, “We eat in restaurants several times a week and yet know very little about their history. I plan to dip into my archive of research and images every so often to present a little tidbit that highlights aspects of our American restaurant culture. Let me know your thoughts”- Restaurant-ing Through History

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

When Etiquette Tabooed a Knife

An 1878, patented design for a utensil which is “adapted to subserve the various functions of knife, fork, and spoon, as occasion be required.” – For when “etiquette has tabooed the knife,” which was the case with steel bladed knives and salads, due to common salad dressing ingredients. Knives were also “tabooed” for pastries and pies, due to the special forks already created for them.

“My present invention consists of an article of table-cutlery adapted to subserve the various functions of knife, fork, and spoon, as occasion be required. Except when used to hold meats while being carved, (for which purposes an ordinary two-tined fork is usually employed), the tines of the table fork are seldom or never called into play, as such for more than from one-fourth to one-third of their length, the remaining portions being useless as tines, and not adapted, obviously, to subserve the functions of the spoon. 

Occasion frequently arises also when it is desirable or necessary to use the fork as a cutting implement, as certain varieties of food, notably such as are served with mustard or vinegar, attack and discolor the steel of the table knife, while with others, such as pastry or pies, etiquette has tabooed the knife.” — Charles Reese, 1878

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia