Tijuana's accidental masterpiece: raw garlic, anchovy, egg yolk and lemon on cold romaine, invented in a single improvised night in 1924
Origin: Tijuana, Mexico
From the journey of Garlic.
The Caesar salad has one of the most precisely documented origin stories in the history of modern cuisine. On the evening of 4 July 1924, Caesar Cardini (an Italian immigrant who ran a restaurant in Tijuana just across the US border from San Diego (American Prohibition had made Mexican restaurants popular with thirsty Californians)) found himself running low on supplies after an unexpectedly busy Independence Day weekend. Working with what remained in his kitchen, he improvised a salad of romaine lettuce, garlic-rubbed croutons, Worcestershire sauce, lemon, eggs, olive oil, and Parmesan, tossed dramatically at the tableside and served on whole leaves to be eaten with the fingers. The dish was an immediate sensation. Garlic is the defining aromatic of the Caesar. In the original Cardini method, the large wooden salad bowl is rubbed vigorously with a cut garlic clove before anything else goes in: the bowl itself becomes the first garlic infusion, coating every subsequent ingredient with its volatile oils. The dressing then incorporates raw garlic again, this time pounded or grated to a paste with the anchovies and incorporated into the emulsion with lemon and egg yolk. The result is a salad with two distinct registers of garlic: the subtle background note absorbed into every leaf from the bowl, and the assertive, pungent depth in the dressing itself. The anchovy question is a famous one. Caesar Cardini's original recipe did not explicitly list anchovies; they arrived in the dressing via Worcestershire sauce, which contains them in processed form. His brother Alex's competing 'aviator salad' included whole anchovies more overtly. The contemporary version that spread worldwide through the late 20th century uses anchovy fillets openly in the dressing. Both approaches are legitimate; both trace their origins to the same Tijuana kitchen. The Caesar salad is perhaps the most widely copied salad in the world, and the most widely corrupted. The original is spare and precise: no bacon, no tomatoes, no chicken unless it is specifically requested as an addition. The power of the dish lies in the balance of the dressing, garlic, anchovy, acid, egg, oil, and the sharp salt of Parmesan, and in the cold crispness of the romaine against the warm croutons. Everything else is dilution.
The original Cardini Caesar used coddled eggs (briefly immersed in boiling water for 60 seconds) rather than raw yolks. For a more authentic version, coddle your eggs before separating. The Worcestershire sauce is non-negotiable; it provides the anchovy depth of the original even if you use no additional anchovy fillets. For a vegetarian version, replace the anchovies with 1 tsp white miso paste and use a vegetarian Worcestershire sauce. Some Los Angeles restaurants in the 1930s and 1940s added a splash of dry white wine to the dressing; excellent if you wish to try it.
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