A salad is a dish consisting of small pieces of raw or cooked food mixed with a sauce and almost always served cold. Salads can be based around a wide variety of foods including vegetables, fruits, and cooked meat,eggs, and grains. Garden salads use a base of leafy greens; they are common enough that the word saladalone often refers specifically to garden salads. Other types include bean salad, tuna salad, fattoush, Greek salad, and somen salad.
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 duringRoman times.
The phrase "salad days", meaning a "time of youthful inexperience" (on notion of "green"), is first recorded by Shakespeare in 1606, while the use of salad bar first appeared in American English in 1976.
