This basically looks like what i bring back to the table from a salad bar. Pickled beets, pickles, tuna, macaroni salad, chopped eggs, bacon, cole slaw, all on a bed of spinach.
Salmagundy, Gathered on a Monday, Washed on a Tuesday, Chopped on a Wednesday, Cooked on a Thusday, Eaten on a Friday, Saved for a Saturday, Thrown out on Sunday, That was the end of Salma Gundy.
Very similar to the antipasto dishes my grandmother made (she grew up in Italy) Meats, olives, pickled veggies, fresh greens, chopped cheeses, summer sausage, boiled eggs, lots of herbs and spices; served before the main meal with homemade bread and an olive oil and vinegar dressing. Man, grandma's food was always soooo good.
Grandma's are always great at cooking. Mine was all old school southern comfort food. Fried chicken, country style steak, baked macaroni and cheese, homemade biscuits😊
Conceptually it reminds me of modern Cobb Salads. Large party salads where a base of greens is topped heavily with multicolored and strongly flavored ingredients like blue cheese, grilled chicken, tomatoes, seasoned croutons, bacon, boiled eggs, etc. Especially in the presentation focus, and making things look large. Cobb salads commonly are served on platters that can just barely hold them for the same effect as the heaping over a bowl described in the recipe in the video.
@@shelbymarie9408 I got hungry half way through and went and made a salad to eat while finishing the video :) Lettuce, turkey carrots, celery, red cabbage and apples. Whatever’s in the fridge!
It sounds very much like fiambre from Guatemala. Fiambre is a cold salad, traditionally served during Dia de los Muertos, often boasting an impressive 50+ ingredients!
Interestingly, "green" salads are one of the older foods we know about thanks to them being literally noteworthy. One would only have some weeks each year to have a true green salad of fresh greens with other fresh vegetables and fruits before they had to be preserved or eaten, so people from ancient Romans to Frankish kings considered them special enough to mention even if there are not many elaborate recipes on the scale of Salamagundy here.
funny how they've gone from peasant food nobles considered insulting to serve (like McDonalds at the White house today) to today where it's a favorite food of the 1% because of how healthy it is and how expensive peasant foods like kale and watercress are now.
@@pendlera2959 yeah I've dug kale out of the snow for lunch, and chard is similar. Same with dandelions. They grow slower in cold weather but if you plant it late in the year you can eat it most of the winter. Eating it as a salad would be kind of tough and bitter but you can make a rubbed/massaged salad to avoid that if you want it raw or just parboil it.
My grandfather always laid out a Sunday Night Supper. Leftovers from the fridge withbread, cheese and jars of pickles, mayo, mustard. We loved it as kids on the 1970s.
In defense of pirate Salamagundy: pirates liked to live above their means and play act rich men, and from what I've heard this was a sort of celebration food for them. Adding to that, a lot of pirate captains were or had been if not gentlemen associates of gentlemen and were aware of the place of grand salad, that also made a good impression on the crew as a colorful communal dish.
I once got invited to a fisherman's party, and I was honestly expecting seafood and fish. However... he got chicken... So I doubt a pirate crew that would likely eat fish and crackers all the time, would also have fish as a party food.
All sailors, pirates or otherwise, were usually very glad to see anything that looked like a vegetable or fruit (or freshly roasted fowl) when they were on land.
What a beautiful dish for something like Thanksgiving. I feel like it'd be great in the early fall too because so much of this is cold. Where I live, it's VERY HOT until October most years, meaning that a salad like this could actually be a bad idea due to the meats going off in the humid heat. But imagine this in the middle of a table with plenty of nice bread, or crackers, and maybe some switchel or cider! Maybe not grand in the way the folks back then would have thought, but grand enough for me!
Late fall and winter traditionally were seasons when people were eating mostly preserved foods like pickles and various meat and fish products. This is something that would not look out of place on New Year table.
In one restaurant where i worked, one of the waitresses made the most amazing salads by mincing everything quite small. Every forkful gave a taste explision because chopped finely enough and mixed well, you got a tadte of everything in one bite.
I'm partial to this too. My grandmother used to do this then heap it on top of lettuce leafs. I don't make it very often because its a lot of work but it's really delicious.
Yes my favorite way to make salad is thin slice everything. It needs to be eaten fast, but you get a good blend of everything. Learned that from my mama.😊
We have a dish here which is called solomon gundy; it's not actually the jamaican dish but Nova Scotian version of pickled herring and its incredible. I love all these similar names fot very different foods ❤
Nova Scotia, and specifically Pubnico, is the land of my mother’s family on both sides. I finally visited this summer and loved it. You are fortunate to live in such a beautiful place.
the thing about the pirates... salamgrundy was a mix of whatever was in the food stores not unlike how a mom would make chop suey for her kids in trying times.
When my brother and I had a house together we would call it a Garbage Trough. Whatever foods were about to go bad and had to get used would just get tossed together
This is similar to a "chef's salad." I've had this type of dish all my life so I don't think it's ever been forgotten but did get renamed and slightly modified. The biggest problem is the amount of time required to make it. Roughly 45 minutes to an hour of chopping and slicing and dicing and arranging of a wide variety of ingredients. I also add a couple of types of cheese. It can be an entire meal on its own but it pairs best with freshly baked bread and some butter.
It really is similar to a Chef's Salad, isn't it? Yes, it does take time to slice-n-dice each ingredients, but I always enjoy doing that since everything is so colorful. We eat salads most every day at lunch. The only item I never seem to use is pickles or the small gherkins -- a great idea! And I tend to use fresh grated beets (raw), not pickled beets. Our salad today was with roasted chicken and a side of freshly baked Jalapeno Cheddar Bread, a quick bread made from homegrown Jalapenos. Several years ago, during the early phase of the lockdown, I substituted celery with homegrown Mizuna using the stalks as the celery. Then fresh Mizuna and fresh lettuces from the garden were the greens. Worked so well!
Seems like this was a way to use up the bits and dabs of leftover foods or pickled veggies that, by themselves aren't enough to make a meal or side, but put them together and present it in an eloquent way to make a new meal.
When I was growing up, at a nearby mall, there was a soup and salad shop that had the same name, although different spelling, and I am just tickled that the name has a deeper meaning than I had known.
The salamagundy reminds me of a precursor of a cobb salad. (Also apparently they also spell it "salmagundi" now, but I presume that's a modernization of the word?)
My brother I just want to say how much of a pleasure it is to continue to see your face in these videos. You’re one of my favorite RU-vid channels content wise, but a lot of what you do is carried by how warm and inviting you as a person are. Great stuff all around. Here’s to many more years of health and happiness
I love the mention of "Stertion" (nasturtium) flowers. I planted some once and they've re-seeded themselves and come back every year. I look forward to making my fancy garden salads with flowers on top.
I used to make exactly this every day after school and sit in fornt of the tv with a giant bowl. I have a local place that has an amazing "choose your own adventure" salad menu. Once a week for me.
I find that salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar actually make for a perfect dressing for a salad, enhancing the flavor and richness quite a bit while not having the unnecessary heaviness or overpowering character of a conventional bottled dressing.
While visiting a friend in the UK in the 80s the only thing offered as dressing for salad was a squeeze of fresh lemon and sprinkling of salt. Very tasty. I still do this today.
I clicked on this video because I recognized the name of the dish as similar to something my mom has mentioned having while growing up in Jamaica (I always thought she’d said ‘Solomon Grundy’, or something of that sort, but I was a kid, wtf did I know? 🤷🏽♀️). I was then disappointed to see that this is actually a mixed salad, as my mom said that the dish she remembers having is a salty, smoked fish dish, which is often used as a topping or spread. BUT THEN! You mentioned Caribbean pirates eating a smoked herring dish by the same name, and my heart skipped a beat! I am so happy to have stumbled upon this connection to my mother’s culture. Thank you so much for mentioning the Caribbean version! ❤🤗
This salad tradition seems like what salad niçoise is inspired by. Absolutely fascinating episode! I’ve wondered about this for a very long time. Excellent work, Townsends team! 😃✨
in the 18th century, Russian cuisine was heavily influenced by French cuisine as well, and you can clearly see the connection here to the Russian salads called Vinagret, Olivier and Shuba - all of which are still popular today.
What I find interesting is that the Caribbean/Canadian version has a distinct similarity to the Slavic, Ashkenazi, German and Scandinavian tradition of salted and pickled herrings served cold with herbs and vegetables. Russian territory went French and French territory went Russian
@@emilynelson5985 interesting. Another fun story is that when the Russians wanted to know what to call one of the salads, the French by mistake told them the name of the dressing, not the salad itself. Now that salad is forever known as 'vinagret' in Russian. Perhaps they just couldn't pronounce Salamagundy :)
@@petergray2712Macédoine has a more neutral character, and you can use it to speak positively of a situation. You’ll find the name on cans, meaning a mix of peas, carrots, green beans, potatoes, baby corn etc.
Oh, we call that “a collation” at this house. It starts with any available fresh veggies, eggs, cheeses, some nuts, and a fridge and freezer raid, and ends up a pile on a big plate or two with mayo, mustard and bread or chips on the side. I like pickles, but the family doesn’t, so I pop out a few capers for myself.
My God, I've been making Salamagundy for YEARS without knowing it. Just made some for dinner. Chopped lettuce, chopped red cabbage, diced tomatoes, diced heart of palm, diced pickles, some nuts (usually a mix of chopped Brazil nuts and walnuts), a sprinkle of raisins for sweetness, diced boiled egg and diced ham or kani-kama (crab sticks) for meats. Dress with a mix of olive oil, vinegar, salt and black pepper.
This is obviously a dish for days when the women of the house weren't able to cook anything for supper, whether because it was just too hot to light the fire, or they were out of firewood, or the day had been too long and busy for them. I'm talking about the more prosaic version of the dish mentioned in the recipes, not the fancy one for banquets. Nowadays many people just order takeout on these kinds of days. In my experience, this kind of cold salad-and-pickles dish is often made for a quick lunch by people who avoid takeout and cook a lot of their own food. Pickled and leftover foods are brought out and everybody can assemble what they want out of it. Great way to use up leftovers as well as last year's pickled foods. Fascinating to see that people back then had the same issues - some days you're just too tired to cook, or it's too hot to turn on the stove, and using up leftovers and last year's canned goods was a priority.
woah, just yesterday I was saying how it's weird that salmagundi hasn't been covered here yet. This time of summer really calls for salads, the spirit of the dish definitely lived on in western cooking.
I found salamagundy similar to a salad I prepare for larger gatherings, mostly family. 2-3 kinds of greens topped with several fresh veggies and ham with shredded cheese, hard boiled egg slices and the pickled veggies including pickled cucumbers and beets and any others I have and top it with a mound of fresh peas. Serve with your favorite dressing and it will provide a great course for multi course meals or it can be the whole meal. If you choose it to be the whole meal make more to fill you up. This is my own concoction, but like this salad from the 1800s, it seems the prerequisite to the modern day “Salad Bar”. Great video, as always! Would like more outdoor/ cabin projects please! Thanxz
Nice to see a salad episode. Its not talked about much in historical recipes but salads were eatned by both the poor and wealthy. My Great Grandmother told me about making things like dandelion salad when she was a girl in the late 19th century. They nearly always had eggs, cheese, and several kinds of pickles. All grown by them. She liked lutefisk with her's.
@@az55544 I don't know what was angry about it lol but okay the comment was comparing it to a ploughman's lunch that went from something you'd eat for lunch on a farm to seeing it in a bougie Cafe for $20 even though this is not comparable.
Salamagundy reminds me of Julia Child's _salade niçoise_ , which is also a "composed" (arranged) salad and which is popular in the city of Nice on France's Mediterranean coast. Traditionally it contains tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, Niçoise olives and anchovies or tuna; and it's dressed with a vinaigrette or merely a good olive oil.
This really reminds me of the chopped salads that are so popular today such as Cobb or Nicosie salad. Always good to clean out the fridge and use up those leftover ingredients.
Up until a couple years ago, souse was available at our meat counter in our local grocery store. The last time I asked about it last year, they had discontinued it. They also had had headcheese.
I love the looks of putting everything together. It reminds me of my childhood & occasionally I do this now when I have a little bit of different leftovers & make hard boiled eggs and a loaf of homemade bread & butter or olive oil.
Great way to serve a cool salad for a main dish. Thanks for sharing with us Jon. Stay safe and keep up the great history of foods and serving them. Fred.
Interesting, as in the Atlantic Provinces of Canada, we have a pickled herring/onions called Solomon Gundy, which derives from this old English word you refer to. In Jamaica they have a smoked herring spread of same name.
Hearing you mention samphire is *great*. I never had it growing up, but in the last decade, one of the markets near us, for a short while, had samphire at their olive bar. I fell in love with it, and can totally understand why for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, it's been a vegetable in areas that had salt marshes. Thanks!
Very interesting! Thanks for the content as usual and glad youre with us here on RU-vid making this a more informative place and paying tribute to our history as people.
I my home country of the Netherlands we have a dish very similar to this, quite popular for special events called: 'huzarensalade', Meaning a 'salad for Hussars' (cavalry)
This reminds me of a modern day salad bar. It also reminds me of the pickle trays, vegetable platters, and charcuterie boards I like at special events and holidays.
This is awesome!😂 I just made myself a huge salad for lunch, sat down to eat, and find that your new video is about salad (salamagundy!) 😂 Such serendipity!
Looks delicious! Growing up on a Pa. Dutch farm my foster home, My foster mother Anne made something like this, I can't remember what she called it but looks very much the same! I love it! So many different salads today I try to look and get a feel for the ingredients and sauces used, I think I am partial to bacon dressings and the like!
Yes in Jamaica we have something called Solomon Gundy which is an appetizer of pickled fish pâté made from smoked red herring, Scotch Bonnet peppers and seasoning it’s so delicious.
I had a Southwestern Cobb salad in either Arizona or New Mexico years ago. That thing was a total meal with at least three different meats on it. Not sure I even finished it, but I remember that I was totally stuffed.
I hope you had fun making this, because it got me chuckling a few times. How many takes did it take to get all the "pickled this and pickled that" without Jon's tongue getting twisted into a knot? Bravo on producing a shot with no twists 😅 But seriously, this looks like an excellent summertime recipe for a picnic or cookout. I don't know if it could be transported any distance, but it would be beautiful on the patio table on the deck.
I actually cooked this back in high school! This was when the "Pirates of the caribbean" movies first came out and became really popular. I was a huge fan and wanted to know everything about pirates. Eventually I found a kid's book about pirates, full with history, recipes, crafts and so on at the bookstore. When we learned how to cook at school, the teachers let us bring our own recipes to try out, and this is what I brought. It ended up as a sort of chicken salad, very delicious. I need to look if I still have that book somewhere.
This is a chopped, chef's, or pub lunch salad, in particular a New England-ish style one that includes beets and carrots. I see pickled beets in salads somewhat here in the Midwest, but they're a bit more common over east and in the British isles.
It reminds me a bit of antipasto. The kinda I’ve seen in fancier restaurants. You usually put it together yourself but it’s all presented in individual plates to pick from.
I don't know how common it is in other counties but pickeled beetroot was and still is a common feature of a salad spread in Australia. Still one of my favourites. 😊
TIL I’ve been eating salamagundy about once a month for the last decade. I tend to make a lot of quick pickles and then have to get rid of them all at once in a fridge clean out before they go off, this is a great way to do it. It’s almost like an early salad Niçoise
This looks and sounds like really healthy eating, compared to many dishes of the 17th-18th centuries. I like a lot of the dishes you make here at Townsends Inn, but I could definitely go for salamagundy!
I work at a wholesale meat market in a majority African American city in the south that serves to a mostly underprivileged people and the most popular thing we sell is sliced pickled soused *hog head*. You’ll sometimes find teeth in it. while not common ive heard of people eating turtles, squirrels, racoons, opossums… the socio-economic situation of these people i believe has caused it to preserve Native American/slave culinary traditions in cooking. I willing to bet this occurs in other unprivileged parts of the world.
I've heard of Salamagundy but didn't know what went into it. Almost sounds like a forerunner to today's Chef's Salad with meats, veggies and egg yolks minus the cheese! Or a version of Charcuterie with different meats, pickles and again cheeses! I'm surprised they didn't add cubes of cheeses as well since they made their own homemade cheeses back then. I have a cookbook with recipes from the 1700s, the Williamsburg Cookbook and the Mystic Seaport Cookbook that has all old receipts what they called recipes back then and because my forebears have been here since 1648, 1721 and 1738 on both sides of my family and fought in the Revolutionary War, three of them generals and in the Civil War. per family history and genealogists and from the Pennsylvania Dutch on my father's side and Yankee New England on my mother's side both famous for their cooking/baking. So thanks for the clarification.
