Momma found The Best tutorial for dolly-sized salads at Joanne's 18" Dolls blog, so Clementine and I are happily dining upon salads this week in anticipation of Thanksgiving.
The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the same meaning, from the Latin salata (salty), from sal(salt). In English, the word first appears as "salad" or "sallet" in the 14th Century.
Romans and ancient Greeks ate mixed greens with dressing. In his 1699 book, Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets, John Evelyn attempted with little success to encourage his fellow Britons to eat fresh salad greens. Mary, Queen of Scots, ate boiled celery root over greens covered with creamy mustard dressing, truffles, chervil, and slices of hard-boiled eggs.
(Incidentally, Mary helped popularize marmalade. She brought it back to Scotland from France and ate it when ill - hence "Marie est malade" or marmalade.)
The United States popularized mixed greens salads in the late 19th Century, although several other regions of the world adopted salads throughout the second half of the 20th century.
