To brighten the day of @chefbeth, i decided to share part of a conversation i had with a former kitchen manager while i was the dessert and salad chef. Conversation in the back of the house can be somewhat salty ( see what i did there?) and a little vulgar, but its overall a family. The question was posed as to how the term "tossing salad" came about, and while theories were tossed around (if you will) as the salad chef, i felt i needed to set the record strait.
In my extensive, but possibly flawed research, i discovered the truth. In ancient greek times, even the rich clearly didnt have everything. Plates, bowls, utensils were only for the very specialest of occations. But almost everyone had a slave. So when the thrifty, and wildly creative greeks held a dinner party, they would use slaves as servents as well as serving platters. As we all know, salads are a hodge podge of vegetables and dressing, and to properly blend said hodge podge of items, you need to use both nimble hands and really fling some food! Well, trying this on a slaves bossem may have been fun, but was rather messy, and the crook of the neck was no good either, but if you turned them over... well a natural bowl was there. Plus the back could be used as a meats and cheese tray. In the end, it was very uncooth to not finish your food, and to leave things dirty, hence... this ironically is how the word laddle came to be as well. Laddle can be pronounced and understood even when fellatio is being performed. Find a partner and try. Anyway, this tradition continued for centuries until one noble decided to expand the idea. The slaves revolted at soup and saltine saturday. To this day, soup is only served cold or at room temperature in all greek homes. Veered off subject again. Until the invention of the diswasher, greeks had to lick plates and serving ware clean. To be honest, to this day, you never want to go into a greek bakery and be offerer to lick the beaters. Has a whole different meaning there. No lie, not going into detail.
I hope this helps in the origins of a culinary term. Tune in again for weird but true kitchen stories.
