As a child we had salad when we visited other people, but I’m not sure we actually had it very often at home – yes, we had tomatoes, mostly home-grown, and spring onions, and delicious white, nutty fenland celery… but a bowl of salad with lettuce we didn’t have as I remember. Going to others and having salad it was literally a bowl of lettuce leaves, whole or quartered tomatoes, whole spring onions,and Heinz salad cream.
Looking through Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery published in 1855, she has a large section on salads: English salad, French salad,Des Cerneaux or walnut salad, Suffolk salad, Yorkshire ploughman’s salad (not bread, cheese and pickle as you might imagine but shredded lettuce, young onions and a dressing of treacle and vinegar and a little black pepper… hmmm, not sure I’ll try this!) sorrel salad, lobster salad, and an excellent herring salad (Swedish receipt)
She has a variety of dressings, butters, and garnishes, catsups and chatneys, including cold Dutch or American sauce, English sauce, sauce mayonnaise, red or green mayonnaise sauce, imperial mayonnaise, remoulade, Oxford brawn sauce.
Some of the combinations of ingredients seem a little strange to modern eyes, but I think when it gets to salad weather I may try some!
Lois Elsden 
Most of my Italian friends eat there salad after the main course and I find it rather odd. How is eaten in England as I don’t recall?
LikeLike
These days it’s really popular and most people have it… there are bags of mixed leaves in supermarkets, and all sorts of different vegetables now available, lots of lovely olive oils and balsamic vinegars…
Nearly every meal in a restaurant is served with a salad – which my husband hates, he only likes cooked veg!
LikeLike