What do you regard as a salad?

Side salad … lettuce, cucumber, tomato and perhaps some other leaves or watercress.

Lettuce (leaves), tomato, cucumber, finely cut peppers, beetroot. Nowadays I add seeds as a topping.

Side salads vary tremendously and it seems to bare little relationship to the cost of the meal

Slimming World consultant said that a salad should have at least 10 ingredients! Often a case of ‘what’s in the fridge?’ for me however.

We went to a restaurant a couple of days ago and were served an iceberg lettuce cut neatly down the middle with some blue cheese grated over the top and a creamy mayonnaise. It was delicious but very strange. Italian style, that came out on its own before the main course. Supposed to be a ‘salad’.

It depends if it's billed as an actual salad or if it's basically decoration.
Side-salads are usually paid for separately in my experience.

If it says "with salad" I expect almost nothing.
If it's with a salad I might expect more. I admit I usually ask these days.
At home my salads can be anything at all...

I have salad pretty much every day and even as a "side" mine are substantial!

I do like a salad and have lettuce tomato cucumber coleslaw, relish anything I fancy..

In the café where I volunteer we serve homemade hot pies and sausage rolls served with an optional salad. The salad usually consists of a few leaves, some tomato and cucumber slices and some crisps. The crisps have always puzzled me 😅

A salad to me is a mixture of vegetables, cooked or raw, which is usually served cold. It can also contain fruit, nuts and/or seeds. What chefs trendily call "warm salad", I would call mixed hot vegetables in the process of going cold.
Just lettuce and cucumber is mere garnish! Even a simple green salad includes more than two ingredients.

Should definitely have a cheese or cold meat - or both, let's be greedy - as the 'backbone' of the salad. Then build around that.

A salad doesn’t have to have cheese or cold meat Margs

As yours was a ‘salad’ served with the main dish it can basically have anything, just a few lettuce leaves even, as it’s just a garnish basically

A side salad that you pay extra for should certainly have more ingredients

Desdemona asked about a side salad. Not the main dish. Therefore it need not have meat or cheese. These would be in the main dish surely.

We have lots of things in a salad -

Mixed leaves, cucumber, tomato, sliced red and yellow peppers, beetroot, and spring onions. My husband likes Scotch egg and sausage roll as well.

I would have complained about that pathetic offering.

the dish I chose was served with salad

Desdemona doesn't say it was actually a salad dish (eg, ham salad) or even a "side-salad" - though she does ask what we might see in a side salad.

I agree with BlueBelle here.
It depends a bit on the wording as to what to expect.

I would have complained about that pathetic offering but it was just on the plate as part of the meal howverydareyou
It doesn’t sound as if Desdemona ordered a salad mains, that was just a part of the meal on her plate She hasn’t said what her meal was but that lettuce and cucumber were just the trimmings
For instance her meal may have been a pizza or a pasta dish and the green leaves and cucumber were to add a bit of colour and variety
Obviously if you ordered a ‘salad’ as a mains you would expect the full kabush

Salad is one of my most favourite things.

I use any combination of spinach, watercress, Webb lettuce, rocket etc as a base (never bags).
Then it’s a selection of blanched green vegetables chilled, mange tout, green beans, asparagus, broccoli, baby sweetcorns.
Now it’s the bottom of the fridge, cucumber,radish,spring onion etc.

I never put tomato on a salad, they make everything soggy, if tomatoes have been stored properly at room temperature they are delicious served separately with some red onion.

Finally Parmesan shavings and of course the best bit a beautiful homemade dressing.
A well made salad is a joy!

I eat a lot of salad and my definition of what makes a salad is - whatever you want to make it.

A side salad should be no bigger than the size of a portion of vegetables you would have a hot meal. I had lunch in the Dunelm cafe this week. I had a baked potato with vegetable chilli and a side salad. The potato was medium sized, as was the portion of veg chilli, quite satisfactory, and the side salad was a generous handful of leaves and a cherry tomato. It seemed to me a proportionate salad for the size of the dish it accompanied.

A main course salad should contain whatever the awaiting eater wants it to include and no more. It could be one veg or twenty. It usually includes a portion of protein - cold meat, cheese, fish, pate, pizza, eggs and comes on a dinner plate.

I do not believe in being unnecessarily prescriptive in what any meal should contain

Desdemona

I went out for lunch today (a rare event!) and the dish I chose was served with salad.

It arrived with just some shredded lettuce and cucumber. To me, that isn't really a salad. Ok to bung in a sandwich but not to advertise as salad as a meal accompaniment.

When I make a basic salad at home it is lettuce, cucumber, tomato, onion and some shredded carrot, sometimes sweetcorn as well.

Sorry to be a whinger. What do you think is a decent side salad?

I couldn't agree more! I complained in a restaurant when the 'side salad' was a pile of wilted rocket. I was actually furious 😠 because the steak I ordered, a rare treat, i.e. the meal, was expensive.

Side salad, at the very least should be lettuce, tomato, onion and cucumber. They generally get it right in Greece and Italy.

A salad to me is the basics lettuce tomato cucumber at least! I ordered a quiche with side salad and it came with a few sprigs of lettuce leaves not amused!

A salad for me growing up was lettuce tomato cress egg ham or cheese a pickled onion and salad cream. My dad grew most of the ingredients. I still do similar with tinned fish or rollmops and beetroot.
What was on your plate was a salad trim.

I was in a vegetarian restaurant once, I had ordered a main dish and paid extra for a 'green side salad' which was several limp, soggy English lettuce leaves with no form of dressing or topping. Needless to say I complained. I was met with rudeness and asked "What did I expect?"

I never eat salad when out for a meal, more tummybugs are caused by it than anything else.Have a hot meal to be safe.
My own salads contain tons of ingredients.

I think people need to realise the difference between describing their favourite salad and the concept of what a side salad or a main salad are

A salad is simply a dish containing raw vegetables. There are hundreds if not thousands of ingredients that it could include. and all of us have salad ingredients we would never include in a salad because we dislike them.

Last week we made farro salad (no greens), fruit salad (no greens), Tabbuleh (green herbs), potato salad (vegan), and Greek Salad (no feta).

Greens do not a salad make, IMO.