A fresh take on a classic: Cobb salad

In an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," comedian Larry David and his wife are at a restaurant with another couple. When the waiter comes over to the table to take orders, each diner indicates what he or she wants, and Larry orders a Cobb Salad -- without eggs, blue cheese, or bacon, all identifying ingredients of the dish.

These modifications in the salad appear to disturb Cliff Cobb, one of the members of the party. He tells Larry it was his grandfather who invented the salad while working as a chef in Chicago. Larry reacts with skepticism and typical disdain and ultimately in an attempt to underscore how ludicrous he finds the claim asserts that his grandfather was Harold Bingo. "He invented Bingo," Larry says.

Anyone old enough, as I am, to remember the "I Love Lucy" show could have easily settled the argument, for we remember vividly the classic first episode in the Hollywood series when Lucy and her friends Ethel and Fred Mertz have lunch at the Brown Derby, the iconic Hollywood restaurant whimsically housed in a building shaped like a man's hat. On the other side of their booth sits William Holden, who will later accidentally get hit in the face with a pie thanks to Lucy's shenanigans. He orders a Cobb Salad, already a staple on the menu at the venerable restaurant where it was invented.

The Cobb Salad, one of the first to be served as a main course, has become a perennial culinary star, though hardly the first star to hang out at the Derby. Charlie Chaplin, Jack Benny, the Barrymores and a host of other Hollywood celebrities were regulars there. Joan Crawford portrayed Mildred Pierce in a scene set in the bar there. Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard while occupying booth No. 5 there. And Marlene Dietrich was thrown out when she walked in there wearing slacks.

The story of the Cobb Salad, the Brown Derby's most successful creation, reads like other Hollywood starlet discovery stories -- it was a fortuitous accident. The official account tells how late one night in 1937 the owner of the restaurant, Bob Cobb, and his friend Sid Graumen, whose namesake Chinese Theatre was, like the Derby, a Hollywood landmark, strolled into the restaurant looking for something to eat. All the chefs had already gone home, so they raided the refrigerator and gathered some lettuce, avocadoes, tomatoes, chicken, hard-boiled egg, chives, cheese, plus a little bacon. They chopped everything up (reputedly because Cobb had dental work done that day), laced it with French dressing, and had a feast. Though it didn't yet have a name, the Cobb Salad, essentially a traditional composed salad in the French manner but with an American twist reminiscent of a BLT sandwich, was born

Though it was originally composed of leftovers, the classic Cobb Salad contains, among other things, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, cheese, chicken, and hard boiled eggs.Submitted by Tom Harte

The next day Graumen returned to the restaurant for lunch and ordered what he called a Cobb Salad and before long the concoction, assembled at tableside, became an overnight sensation and the basis for power lunches all over Tinseltown. More than four million of them were sold by the time the Brown Derby closed its doors, and they're still making them at restaurants all over California, the salad bowl of the nation, where fresh produce, an integral part of what's called California cuisine, is available year round.

So while the Brown Derby is now passe, the Cobb Salad is by no means old hat.

Thai Cobb Salad

This salad, a variation of the classic version adapted from a recipe in Taste of Home, has nothing to do with the legendary baseball player Ty Cobb. However, it is always a home run when served in the heat of summer during baseball season.

• 1 bunch torn romaine lettuce
• 2 cups shredded rotisserie chicken
• 3 coarsely chopped hard-boiled eggs, peeled
• 1 avocado, peeled and sliced
• 1 shredded carrot
• 1 julienned red pepper
• 1 cup snow peas, halved
• 1/2 cup peanuts
• 1/4 cup cilantro
• 3/4 cup sesame salad dressing
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter

Put romaine on a serving platter and arrange in rows on top the chicken, eggs, avocado, carrots, red pepper, snow peas, and peanuts. Scatter cilantro leaves over all. Combine salad dressing and peanut butter, mixing until smooth, and serve on the side.