Green salad

Salad

A garden salad consisting of lettuce, cucumber, scallions, cherry tomatoes, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and cheese
Main ingredients	A base of vegetables, fruits, meat, eggs, or grains; mixed with a sauce.
Variations	Many

A salad is a dish consisting of a mixture of small pieces of food, usually vegetables. Salads are typically served at room temperature or chilled, with notable exceptions such as south German potato salad which is served warm. Salads may contain virtually any type of ready-to-eat food.

Garden salads use a base of leafy greens like lettuce, arugula, kale or spinach; they are common enough that the word salad alone often refers specifically to garden salads. Other types include bean salad, tuna salad, fattoush, Greek salad, and Japanese sōmen salad (a noodle-based salad). The sauce used to flavor a salad is commonly called a salad dressing; most salad dressings are based on either a mixture of oil and vinegar or a fermented milk product.

Salads may be served at any point during a meal:

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. Salt is associated with salad because vegetables were seasoned with brine or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings during Roman times. The phrase "salad days", meaning a "time of youthful inexperience" (based on the notion of "green"), is first recorded by Shakespeare in 1606, while the use of salad bar, referring to a buffet-style serving of salad ingredients, first appeared in American English in 1976.

The 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.