Before pasta, there was Lady Salad. Today we can taste all kinds of spectacular insalatone or large salads, yet the first to prepare raw leafy vegetables drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and cumin were the Ancient Romans. The root word of salad is sal, the Latin name for salt. And the Latin noun salata (salad) stands for herba salata or salted greens.

In Imperial Rome, Marcus Gavius Apicius, a gourmet and a precursor of the current chefs-writers, wrote the book De Re Coquinaria, a collection of recipes that revealed surprising facts about Roman culinary tastes. Ancient Romans enjoyed lettuces, chicory, and a variety of sprouts, but only at the end of the meal, as ‘third course.” Often, the vegetables were also sprinkled with garum, a fish-based sauce that was a sort of ketchup of the ancient world.