Cobb salad

As tradition built it

Cobb salad

Hollywood Brown Derby version, republished by PBS SoCal

Ingredients

The salad

• ½ head salad greens of your choice
• ½ bunch watercress
• 1 small bunch chicory
• ½ head romaine
• 2 medium tomatoes, peeled if possible
• 2 chicken breasts, poached
• 6 strips bacon, very crisp
• 1 avocado
• 3 eggs, hard-boiled, chopped
• 480ml chives, chopped
• 120ml Roquefort or other blue cheese, grated or crumbled
• 240ml the dressing

Old fashioned French dressing

• 240ml water
• 240ml red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp sugar
• juice of ½ lemon
• 2½ tsp salt
• 1 tbsp black pepper, ground
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp mustard
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 180ml olive oil
• 480ml neutral salad oil

Method

1. Combine the dressing ingredients.
2. Cut or tear the greens fine and arrange them in the bowl.
3. Halve and seed the tomatoes, dice them fine, and lay them in a strip across the greens.
4. Dice the chicken and arrange it over the greens. Chop the bacon fine and add it.
5. Cut the avocado small and arrange it round the edge.
6. Scatter over the egg, chives and cheese. Each goes in its own area on the greens, and the salad comes to the table that way.
7. Just before serving, toss it thoroughly with a cupful of the dressing.

Notes

The standard story credits Robert Howard Cobb, owner of the Brown Derby, with assembling the salad from refrigerator leftovers for his friend Sid Grauman in 1937; a rival, less-repeated account credits the restaurant's executive chef, Robert Kreis, with creating it in 1929 and naming it after Cobb as a tribute.

The Brown Derby closed in 1985 and several circulating versions descend from a later commemorative recreation, so this is treated as the best-documented version available rather than an unbroken 1937 original.

The recipe is the Hollywood Brown Derby's, republished by Katherine Spiers for PBS SoCal. The dressing makes far more than the salad uses.

What a modern chef changes

Sous vide chicken, smoked bacon

Ingredients

• chives, for dehydrating and grinding

Method

1. Poach the chicken breast sous vide at a precise, held temperature rather than in simmering water.
2. Cook the bacon on a Big Green Egg over indirect heat with a light fruitwood smoke, a genuine departure from a pan that adds real depth to a component the original recipe treats as a simple crisp garnish.
3. Dehydrate a portion of the chives and grind them into a fine green seasoning powder, dusted over the finished, chopped salad alongside the fresh remainder.