Salads, Colonists, and Salad Forks

Though salad knives made their official debut in the 1920’s, salad forks were showing up on dining tables and in silver catalogs from 1885 on, so they were created right around the time that salads were making a resurgence in the U.S., as noted by Fannie Farmer in 1896. Salads “are now made in an endless variety of ways, and are composed of meat, fish, vegetables (alone or in combination) or fruits, with the addition of a dressing,” said Fannie.

Colonists brought salads to America and the Gilded Age brought salad forks to the table

With the earliest English colonists, and throughout the colonial period, kitchen gardens were tended in part for the wonderful salad ingredients they produced. Perhaps due to the urbanization and industrialization of America during the late 19th century, there was a falling off in the appreciation of salad. But by the 1890s they were gaining popularity again. 

Fannie Farmer commented in the 1896 edition of “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” that “Salads, which constitute a course in almost every dinner, but a few years since seldom appeared on the table. They are now made in an endless variety of ways, and are composed of meat, fish, vegetables (alone or in combination) or fruits, with the addition of a dressing,” said Fannie.

Once again Americans seem to be rediscovering salads the way they did in Fanny Farmer's day. John Evelyn would be delighted to learn that the American salad bowl is once again overflowing with delicate herbs, greens, wild mushrooms, flower petals, and a wide variety of other imaginative ingredients that bring delight to the eye as well as the taste buds.— Desert Sun, 1988

  🍽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

How Lettuce Changed Etiquette

“Salad forks” were not heard of prior to their creation in 1885. Prior to that time, luncheon-sized forks were often used for salads. It took 41 years before they would be joined at the table with their own “lettuce knives” or “salad knives” — “In the American book of etiquette, according to J. T. Saunders, freight traffic manager for the Southern Pacific company, who says that lettuce knives must soon be added to the list of table cutlery required by the perfect hostess.”           

Lettuce Changed American Table Etiquette in 1926

California is writing a new paragraph in the American book of etiquette, according to J. T. Saunders, freight traffic manager for the Southern Pacific company, who says that lettuce knives must soon be added to the list of table cutlery required by the perfect hostess. 

“For ages past,” Saunders explained, “authorities on etiquette have insisted that lettuce at table must be cut, speared and conveyed to the mouth entirely with the salad fork. Just try this on a sector of crisp and tender giant California head lettuce, and you will quickly discover that it is not so simple as it sounds." Hence the need for a lettuce knife. 

“From 9,744 carloads in 1922, shipments of California lettuce to eastern markets this year will reach the amazing total of 27,000 carloads, a gain of almost 200 per cent in four years. In 1920 shippers on our coast division shipped only 62 carloads of the salad delicacy.      

Special lettuce serving forks, most often with lettuce serving spoons, were a Gilded Age neccesity. In fact, gilded tines were needed to help prevent corrosion to the silver, caused by citric acids, vinegar, etc... and other salad dressing ingredients.— Salads were not popular in the U.S., until the mid 1800s. Their popularity, when they did become fashionable, was due to the fact that they were seen as very French. And “salad” could mean many different types of dishes, across the U.S., not necessarily just what we view as salads today. A salad could be a dish of asparagus or something served in aspic.  Salads were also a delicacy, as they needed refrigeration to keep fresh longer. Those who could afford large ice cellars, could also afford perishable salad greens.

This year, from the same territory, approximately 12,800 carloads will be shipped. “Equally startling has been the growth of Imperial Valley lettuce shipments. From 1,079 carloads in the 1918-19 season, the Valley will, during the coming season, send eastward more than 16,700 carloads of lettuce.” The famous California “Iceberg” head lettuce, developed and perfected by Imperial Valley growers, has created thousands of new lettuce lovers throughout the land. 

“There is no finer lettuce grown anywhere than in California and to this bears witness the fact that all the nation now eats lettuce. Fifteen years ago lettuce was regarded as a luxury, while today it is as commonplace in the American home as oatmeal and coffee.” — The Sausalito News, November 1926 

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