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.
Also the conditions for a salad grow stronger. If there’s lettuce there’s no worry about adding hot ingredients but if it’s a potato salad you’re only making fancy mashed potatoes if it’s hot.
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
There are a few missing points in there IMO, like which of your ingredient is cooked, or how are they sliced? Graped carrots rises the score, but cook them and it’s less likely to be a salad. Diced radish? Not in my salad, especially not cooked, but thinly sliced raw radish definitely belongs. And don’t even get me started on tomatoes.
Damn, I’m not sure the two are compatible then. The salad factor score is meant to be super easy so people don’t get overwhelmed by all the possibilities and variations.
What we need is a salad categorizing multilayer neural network
It wouldn’t be hard to train on obvious salads, but what about the non obvious ones? Who do we trust to properly label these as salad or not a salad?
TIL salad is a spectrum.
“Saladier” is my new favorite word of the day.
I think this is one of those words / concepts where one needs to invoke Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance” idea. You’re not going to find some exact set of criteria that define what people do and don’t consider a salad. They instead have a “family resemblance”.
Your probably idea is not a bad way of describing how that works.
I know, I was being humorous but it is in fact the way most categorization works. Very seldom is it a taxonomy; the way we recognize faces, voices, shapes, etc … it’s all probabilistic.
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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
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
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
Raw? Yes. Cooked? Hell no.
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.
Do you make your vinaigrette without salt and pepper and maybe those don’t count? The ingredient science is very complex
Do you make your vinaigrette without salt and pepper
I do, actually. For whatever reason I don’t like most dressings but I enjoy just olive oil and a nice balsamic.
One, if that ingredient is salad.
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Been there and found out that If you dig deep enough almost everything is either a salad or a soup
A soup is just a salad with a lot of dressing.
Soup is just liquid salad.
Fight me.
Soup, salad, or sandwich. In that order.
Soup and salad are the same thing, just with a different ratio of solids to liquids.
I guess it depends on the language, in my native language I think all foods could be defined as either a salad or a soup (even a sandwich is just a kind of soup)
All you need is lettuce and salt. “Salad” is derived from the latin for salt: sal
Oh i see… sal ad… ad sal… add salt… That’s pretty neat!
I would argue the minimum number of ingredients is two.
Tuna and mayo?
Tuna and mayo it is.
Ham, cheese, and mayo?
Ham, cheese, and mayo it is.
Ham, cheese, mayo, and some croutons.
Or how about ham, cheese, mayo on some crunchy crusty bread (otherwise known as toast).
Ham and cheese toasted sandwich is now a salad.
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.
I’m not gonna claim a salad can’t be hot, but I think of pasta salads as a cold dish. Maybe it depends where your from.
Potato salad is generally cold too, but there is also hot German potato salad.
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
Something in a bowl with a dressing is salad.
- Tomatoes + balsamic + olive oil = salad
- Romaine + Caesar dressing = salad
- Canned tuna + mayo = salad
- Cucumber + rice wine vin + sesame oil = salad
Salad is more fun with multiple ingredients, but everything up there is still salad
So by your definition at least two ingredients are required for a salad.
Well, one ingredient is just that ingredient
Yes. Dry lettuce in a bowl is not salad.
https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/non-edible/other-non-edible/honeymoon-salad.html
Dry lettuce in a bowl is a honeymoon salad. Lettuce alone, undressed.
Noodles + olive oil + grated Parmesan = salad?
When the doctor tells me to eat more salads, yes
Only if you put it in a bowl
Well, there’s noodle salad. I guess pasta is a hot noodle salad, like cereal in milk is a cold soup.
it’s a salad, it’s just a terrible one
Cucumber and onion with a vinaigrette though is a delicious salad.
Two ingredients must be present for something to be a salad - a vegetable and a dressing. I make all sorts of salads. Some have lettuce, some don’t. I make salad with just fennel and an oil/vinegar dressing. I make salad with tomatoes & cucumbers with a dressing. What she ate was 100% a salad. This is a weird fight.
Alright buddy. Here’s your “whole carrot dipped in ranch” salad.
But sticks are more crudite than salad
Oh, my favourite!
I dont do dressings. What do you call 15 ingredients and no dressing? A fryless stir fry? Genuinely curious if there’s a word now!
How do you feel about chicken or tuna salad?
Even fruit salad is out by this definition.
Usually dressed with a simple syrup
What? I’ve never heard of adding simple syrup to fruit salad.
I feel like that’s a grey area because it’s called salad but only in the context a product with dressing (the mayo). but it’s not really a salad, it’s just called chicken salad the way Kraft dinner isn’t really a dinner but it could be a dinner. I say if it only has chicken and mayo, that’s not a salad, that’s a sandwich filling. If it has celery, onion, etc, you could make the argument it was salad.
I feel the same way about cheesecake. It’s really more of a pie if anything.
