Naina_Marbus
Active member
What does Salmagundi mean?
Salmagundi is an English salad dish, comprising cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts and flowers and dressed with oil, vinegar and spices. The equivalent French word is "salmagondis", meaning a hodgepodge or mix of widely disparate things.
The term does not refer to a single recipe, but describes the grand presentation of a large plated salad comprising many disparate ingredients. These can be arranged in layers or geometrical designs on a plate or mixed. The ingredients are then drizzled with a dressing. The dish aims to produce wide range of flavours and colours and textures on a single plate. Often recipes allow the cook to add various ingredients which may be available at hand, producing manyvariations of the dish.
Salmagundi is also purportedly a meal served on pirateships. It is a stew of anything the cook had on hand, usually consisting of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, and onions, often arranged in rows on lettuce and served with vinegar and oil, and spiced with anything available.
So, Salmagundi is used figuratively in modern English to mean a mixture or assortment of things. It is likely that the name is connected with the children’s rhyme, Solomon Grundy:
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end,
Of Solomon Grundy.
The synonyms of salmagundi are potpourri , medley, hodgepodge etc. So I wanted to start a new thread which would be a hodgepodge or mix of widely disparate things.
I could have used any of the other synonyms, but I just wanted the thread to have a totally different title to vet the curiosity, hence the choice of the unheard-of new word. I wanted the title to reflect and capture the flavour of the disconnected posts in my thread.
The equivalent South Indian word is Avial (அவியல்), so that pretty much sums it up.
Salmagundi is an English salad dish, comprising cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts and flowers and dressed with oil, vinegar and spices. The equivalent French word is "salmagondis", meaning a hodgepodge or mix of widely disparate things.
The term does not refer to a single recipe, but describes the grand presentation of a large plated salad comprising many disparate ingredients. These can be arranged in layers or geometrical designs on a plate or mixed. The ingredients are then drizzled with a dressing. The dish aims to produce wide range of flavours and colours and textures on a single plate. Often recipes allow the cook to add various ingredients which may be available at hand, producing manyvariations of the dish.
Salmagundi is also purportedly a meal served on pirateships. It is a stew of anything the cook had on hand, usually consisting of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, and onions, often arranged in rows on lettuce and served with vinegar and oil, and spiced with anything available.
So, Salmagundi is used figuratively in modern English to mean a mixture or assortment of things. It is likely that the name is connected with the children’s rhyme, Solomon Grundy:
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end,
Of Solomon Grundy.
The synonyms of salmagundi are potpourri , medley, hodgepodge etc. So I wanted to start a new thread which would be a hodgepodge or mix of widely disparate things.
I could have used any of the other synonyms, but I just wanted the thread to have a totally different title to vet the curiosity, hence the choice of the unheard-of new word. I wanted the title to reflect and capture the flavour of the disconnected posts in my thread.
The equivalent South Indian word is Avial (அவியல்), so that pretty much sums it up.
Last edited:
opcorn:
