Cobb Salad

The 1937 Brown Derby original with avocado, crispy bacon, Roquefort, hard-boiled egg and iceberg lettuce

Origin: Brown Derby Restaurant, Hollywood, California, USA

From the journey of Avocado.

The Cobb salad was invented in 1937 by Robert H. Cobb, the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood, or so the story goes, with the authority of a founding myth. Cobb, hungry late one night after the kitchen had closed, is said to have ransacked the refrigerators and assembled whatever he found into a bowl: leftover chicken, crispy bacon, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, blue cheese, and (crucially) a California Hass avocado. He chopped everything fine, dressed it with the house French dressing, and ate it standing at the prep counter. The restaurant's owner liked it enough to put it on the menu the next day. Within a year it had spread to restaurants across Los Angeles. The genius of the Cobb salad is its architecture: each component is chopped and arranged in tidy stripes across the length of the plate, then dressed at the table, then tossed together by the diner. The avocado (sliced or chopped, vivid green against the white of the egg and the dark of the bacon) is not an afterthought or a garnish but a structural element: its fat is the textural anchor of the salad, its creaminess the counterpoint to the saltiness of the bacon and blue cheese, its coolness the foil to the acid of the dressing. The Cobb salad is one of the earliest and most successful examples of avocado being integrated into American cuisine as a primary ingredient rather than a novelty, and its enduring presence on American menus more than eighty years after its invention is the measure of how right that integration was.

Ingredients

Salad Base

2 heads iceberg or cos lettuce, finely chopped

Toppings

2 large ripe Hass avocados, diced into 2 cm cubes
2 large cooked chicken breasts (poached or roast), finely diced
200 g streaky bacon, cooked until very crispy and roughly crumbled
3 hard-boiled eggs, finely diced
2 medium ripe tomatoes, seeds removed, finely diced
80 g Roquefort or Gorgonzola, crumbled (or Maytag blue cheese if available)
3 spring onions, finely sliced

Brown Derby French Dressing

3 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp caster sugar
½ tsp fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
120 ml good olive oil

Method

Make the dressing: whisk together the red wine vinegar, Dijon, Worcestershire, sugar, salt, and pepper in a small bowl until the sugar dissolves. Whisk in the olive oil in a slow stream until emulsified. Taste and adjust seasoning. The dressing should be sharp and assertive: it needs to stand up to bacon and blue cheese.
Arrange the chopped lettuce as a bed on a large, flat platter or divide between four plates. Working in neat parallel rows across the length of the platter, arrange each topping in its own stripe: avocado, chicken, bacon, egg, tomato, blue cheese, spring onions. The visual is important: the stripes are the signature presentation.
At the table, drizzle the dressing over the arranged salad. In the Brown Derby tradition, the salad is then tossed together by the server (or at home, by the cook) so that everything is combined and dressed, and each component is distributed evenly throughout. Serve immediately.

Notes

The original Brown Derby recipe used watercress, not spring onions, and called for chives rather than spring onions. Some versions add a small amount of crumbled Roquefort to the dressing itself. The chicken should ideally be a leftover roast chicken breast with skin removed, finely diced: this produces a richer flavour than a freshly poached breast. Do not be tempted to slice the components rather than dice them; the fine chop is part of what makes the Cobb a Cobb.

The Gastrographer

Name: Cobb Salad
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: USA
Ingredients: 2 heads iceberg or cos lettuce, finely chopped; 2 large ripe Hass avocados, diced into 2 cm cubes; 2 large cooked chicken breasts (poached or roast), finely diced; 200 g streaky bacon, cooked until very crispy and roughly crumbled; 3 hard-boiled eggs, finely diced; 2 medium ripe tomatoes, seeds removed, finely diced; 80 g Roquefort or Gorgonzola, crumbled (or Maytag blue cheese if available); 3 spring onions, finely sliced; 3 tbsp red wine vinegar; 1 tsp Dijon mustard; 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce; ½ tsp caster sugar; ½ tsp fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper; 120 ml good olive oil

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control