we call all the iterations mentioned above as a form of salad, but except putting a leaf of lettuce on your sandwich, there’s no lettuce or other greens involved, so why are they called xyz salad?
Because “salad” doesn’t only mean “dish consisting mostly of uncooked lettuce or other greens”.
That sort of salad is usually designated a “green salad” or maybe “garden salad”. A “salad”, unqualified, is just a dish of mixed solid foodstuffs, usually served cold and almost always containing cut-up vegetables in some form.
If you really want a specific term for the type of salad in your thread title, the ones composed mostly of some form of minced animal flesh or egg, they are sometimes called “bound salads” (because they’re made using a thick sauce such as mayonnaise as a binding agent).
I always mix pickles (dill) and if I have them some diced celery and a little diced onion. Thus- salad.
My great aunt, b. 1903, would make some Edwardian-era monstrosities of mayonnaise and whipped cream and God only knew aggregate of vomity mouth-feel, called a “salad.”
Salad goes way way back. The lettuce kind is a latecomer.
late 14c., salade, “raw herbs cut up and variously dressed,” from Old French salade (14c.) and Medieval Latin salata, both from Vulgar Latin *salata, literally “salted,” short for herba salata “salted vegetables” (vegetables seasoned with brine, a popular Roman dish), from fem. past participle of *salare “to salt,” from Latin sal (genitive salis) “salt” (from PIE root *sal- “salt”).
Dutch salade, German Salat, Swedish salat, Russian salat are from Romanic languages. Later extended to dishes composed of meat chopped and mixed with uncooked herbs and variously seasoned (chicken salad, etc.). In reference to the raw herbs and vegetables themselves, in U.S. it is colloquially limited to lettuce (by 1838).
Yes, because of added salady ingredients, it (they) are salads.
We’ve argued before over what counts as “a salad”—or as “salad,” if the distinction matters, which I assert in that thread that it does.
Plop a ice cream scoop of it on a lettuce leaf
Voilà…tuna salad alá highschool cafeteria.
Yummeé !
My MIL mixed cottage cheese, jello (in its powder form), cool whip, and some sort of fruit to complement the jello flavor, then called it salad. I dunno - is it a midwest thing?
Should we invite taco salad into the conversation?
mmm
I hear the Maga crowd loves word salad.
Anyway, the whole Jello/cream salads are not exclusively Midwestern. They are descended from various concoctions of ingredients encased in aspic.
These dishes were tremendously popular during the Gilded Age. Aspic, a sort of clear meat gelatin, was very intensive and difficult to make, and was considered extremely fancy at a dinner party. For rich people mainly.
Then Jello came along and ruined the mystique. Anybody could whip up a fancy aspic themed salad or dessert. Suddenly, molded salads became common, and a lot of people realized they never really liked the taste or texture of that stuff anyway.
Now molded salads are becoming extinct. Or maybe they’re due for a retro foodie comeback?
So I think a working definition of salad would be:
- Contains vegetables (but may also contain proteins and carbohydrates);
- Is not cooked (although elements may be cooked prior to creation of salad);
- Is not served warm;
- Is not a sandwich.
I love Ambrosia Salad.
It’s not healthy with marshmallows, sour cream, pineapple, and coconut added to a can of fruit salad.
It is delicious. 
Seems to me that a good catch-all definition is “a cold dish that traditionally contains raw seasoned herbs, greens, or fruits.” Might contain cooked things, might not. The raw seasoned fruits/veggies may be diced so finely as to be indistinct from a seasoning, but they must be present.
So, sliced-up chicken and mayonnaise, with no raw herbs or seasonings added, wouldn’t strictly be a “salad” under this definition, but traditionally chicken salad did have those things, so it qualifies.
Another rule of thumb - anything that can be mixed with “salad mustard” and contains a raw herb or vegetable is a salad. Deviled eggs, properly mixed with relish or other chopped herbs, are bite-sized egg salads.
I proydly recall the thread where I invented Swedish Fish salad.
So, no fruit salad?
And something like tuna salad or egg salad may or may not be salad, depending on whether the ingredients include something like celery or onions?
I meant fruits and/or vegetables. Sorry.
And tuna salad or egg salad, IMHO, needs some sort of raw herb or vegetable (or fruit) to be a salad.
Why does it need fruits or vegetables? When I make candy sushi I include seaweed salad made entirely of candy. Why isn’t that salad? I make pasta salads that happen to include some vegetables but couldn’t I make one with just pasta, cheese, and meat?
Here in the northern midwest we have lots of different Jell-O salads. I have heard of some horrendous ones with peas, carrots, cabbage, cottage cheese, etc. but the ones we have for get togethers always are made with Jell-O, fruit, and Cool Whip. Some are by making the Jell-O according to the directions on the box and then adding canned fruit when it thickens and then frosting it with Cool Whip after it’s set. Some are made by just mixing the powder Jell-O, Cool Whip, fruit together. I don’t think I’ve seen a mold being used since I was a kid.
Overnight salad:
