Asklemmy

When will the divorce be final?

Merriam Webster says :

*any of various usually cold dishes: such as

a: raw greens (such as lettuce) often combined with other vegetables and toppings and served especially with dressing

b: small pieces of food (such as pasta, meat, fruit, or vegetables) usually mixed with a dressing (such as mayonnaise) or set in gelatin*

As such, even just cucumber would suffice.

Edit: in dutch, a "salade" has to accompanied by a dressing or vinaigrette, thus very much limiting what a salad is.

Have a look at the bottle of ranch dressing, and count all the chemicals in there. Is the count of ingredients necessary for a salad now OK?

To bolster your point I regularly make something I call cucumber onion salad with cucumber, white onion, and oil w herbs, salt and pepper. To me, it's a salad if it focuses on seasoned raw ingredients, esp vegetables, served cold. There's also the confusion over things like chicken/tuna/egg deli salads focused on being eaten as a sandwich or w crackers, and Midwest "salads" for which all rules seem to be moot except that it's likely served cold.

Cut is as a prep step and it becomes a salad.

For me a salad is minimum of two uncooked ingredients.

Those ingredients you listed are literally the ingredients to a dish called cucumber salad. Though usually the dressing is more of an vinegary Italian dressing instead of ranch. Just Google it.

https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/cucumber-salad

I've often had spinach, some shredded cheese, and a vinaigrette and called it salad.

To me, a salad has always been a dish consisting mostly (if not all) of leafy greens. There are times when I'll put spinach leaves or chopped iceberg lettuce in a bowl by itself and eat them plain, and I'll call it a salad.

Adding other chopped/minced/diced/sliced veggies and/or dressing just makes it more of a salad, but a base of leafy greens is, by itself, still a salad. At least, in my personal opinion.

Other foods like "fruit salad" are just borrowing the word salad to give you a baseline sense of its ingredient arrangement, but I personally don't consider them true salads.

Like how "cow pie" is another word for cow poop, but there is a brand/recipe for chocolate snacks called cow pies. It's not a real cow pie, but the name alone gives you an idea of what it might consist of (chocolate, peanuts, maybe some peanut butter, etc.).

My girlfriend calls lettuce salad. A bowl of lettuce she calls a salad

I mean when you put chopped iceberg lettuce and tomatoes, it's a salad... So... Two?

Two ingredients and a "dressing" is a salad.

If no dressing, then three ingredients or more.

Also, chicken caeser salad is a salad, and it has starch/bread.