Italian dressing is a vinaigrette-type

salad dressing A salad dressing is a sauce for salads. Used on virtually all '' leafy salads'', dressings may also be used in making salads of beans (such as three bean salad), noodle or pasta salads and antipasti, and forms of potato salad. Salad dressin ...

in American cuisine that consists of

water Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as ...

, vinegar or lemon juice, vegetable oil, chopped bell peppers,

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or do ...

or corn syrup, herbs and spices (including oregano,

fennel Fennel (''Foeniculum vulgare'') is a flowering plant species in the carrot family. It is a hardy, perennial herb with yellow flowers and feathery leaves. It is indigenous to the shores of the Mediterranean but has become widely naturalized ...

, dill and

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quant ...

) and sometimes

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the on ...

and garlic. The creamy Italian variant adds milk products and stabilizers. Italian and creamy Italian dressings are often bought bottled or prepared by mixing oil and vinegar with a packaged flavoring mix consisting of dehydrated vegetables and herbs. Despite its name, Italian dressing is not used in Italy, where salad is normally dressed with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, salt, and sometimes balsamic vinegar at the table, and not with a pre-mixed vinaigrette. In North American cuisine, Italian dressing is also used as a marinade for meat or vegetables, for stir-frys, and on

sandwich A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

es. Pasta salads sometimes include Italian dressing. The caloric content of Italian dressing varies widely.

History

Ken's

North American style Italian salad dressing is thought to date back to 1941 in Framingham, Massachusetts. Florence Hanna, the daughter of Italian immigrants and wife of restaurateur Ken Hanna, made large batches of her family's salad dressing for the house salads at the restaurant. The restaurant, originally called The '41 Cafe, later changed locations and became known as Ken's Steak House. The salad dressing became so popular that it was made in large vats in the basement of Ken's to keep up with demand. Customers started requesting the Italian dressing to go. The Crowley family, who owned a nearby manufacturing business, approached the Hanna family about bottling the popular salad dressing. This resulted in the creation of Ken's Salad Dressing, which now comes in ten different variations of Italian, as well as many other flavors.

Wish-Bone

Italian salad dressing was served in Kansas City, Missouri, at the Wishbone Restaurant beginning in 1948. The Wishbone was opened in 1945 by Phillip Sollomi along with his mother, Lena. The Italian dressing served at the Wishbone was based on a recipe from Lena Sollomi's Sicilian family which was a blend of oil, vinegar, herbs, and spices. Demand for the salad dressing proved so high that Phillip started a separate operation to produce it for sale, making it by the barrel. The dressing recipe was eventually purchased by Lipton and has been made commercially by a succession of owners since, generating an entire Wish-Bone brand of products currently made by Pinnacle Foods, Inc.

References

{{Portal bar, Food Salad dressings Italian-American cuisine American condiments