The Cobb salad, like turkey on Thanksgiving, is an edible American institution. Growing up in the sixties, at local restaurants there were only two choices for salad: a Cobb Salad or an Iceberg Wedge with Thousand Island Dressing.
A quick Wikipedia search informs that in 1937, Brown Derby owner, Robert H. Cobb, went into the restaurant’s kitchen to fix a late-night snack for Sid Grauman, the operator of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Cobb perused the refrigerator for various ingredients, and chopped them up finely. Thus, the Cobb salad was born. Word soon spread about this creation throughout Hollywood, quickly increasing its popularity.
Ya gotta’ love the Cobb–it’s so accommodating to particular palates. In the first scene of the movie “Julie and Julia”, Julie’s friends were dining out and the women ordered Cobb Salads, each deleting a particular ingredient. I followed suit deleting a hard-cooked egg, traditionally found in a classic Cobb. I also used leftover turkey instead of chicken, romaine instead of iceberg and I chopped the ingredients into a larger dice than the traditional Cobb’s. I would also recommend adding a tablespoon of bacon drippings to the vinaigrette.
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