Bob Cobb’s Salad

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

Good morning. Who is this?

This is Rosella Oxner in Ashland, Wisconsin.

Hello, Rosella. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What’s up?

Well, I actually just moved back here from Monroe, and while I was in Monroe, the senior citizen menu listed a Cobb salad. And I seem to remember back in my home ec days that Cobb was a variety of lettuce. Whether that’s accurate or not, I don’t know. So I was expecting plain lettuce. But what I got tasted like a chef’s salad. And everybody seemed to think that terms were interchangeable, possibly. Since I started telling people I was going to call you guys, a friend mentioned that she thought it was for a chef at the Brown Derby whose name was Cobb.

Mm—

Or possibly he cobbled together a salad.

Cobbled together.

Very good.

But in any case, it sounds like you got a salad with a whole lot more calories than you were expecting. Is that right?

Well, that wasn’t the issue because I love it.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

There was a lot of variety of taste. I am blind, so I couldn’t see that.

Okay.

Well, you’re right that there is a variety of lettuce called Cobb.

Okay.

That name is not that common. I think it’s more often called bib lettuce.

Oh, all right.

Yeah, a lot of times with plants and foods, I’ve written books about both of these, a lot of times the names overlap and different people call the same food by different names or use the same name for different foods. But there is a variety of Cobb lettuce. But you’re right, your friend is more on track with what most people understand to be Cobb salad, which may have been invented by a guy named Bob Cobb in the 1930s at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood.

One way that some people remember all the ingredients in a Cobb salad, although they’re often interchangeable, they often vary, but one way to remember it, there’s an acronym for EAT COB, E-A-T-C-O-B-B, which stands for egg, avocado, tomato, chicken, onion, bacon, and blue cheese.

Are we getting hungry, Grant?

Yes, I am.

That sounds like we have a restaurant here that has both Cobb and Chef Salad. And that sounds like what I’ve heard they have in the Cobb salad.

Interesting.

How is the Chef Salad different then?

It doesn’t have the avocado.

Okay.

And I’m not sure about what else. It’s more rolled up ham and turkey. And cut small. That kind of ingredients, yeah. And croutons in the chef salad and not in the Cobb salad, right?

Probably, yeah.

But we’re at the point where, however many years on, 80, 90 years on, the Cobb salad is used generically for any really hearty salad with a ton of things in it, served in a giant bowl.

Yeah, yeah, whatever you have on hand.

Yeah, so does that help?

That helps a lot.

All right.

Well, we appreciate your calling, Rosella.

Thank you so much, Rosella.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bon appetit.

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