This is what happens when you apply maths without regard to meaning. Perfect example of the adage “Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put tomatoes in a fruit salad.”
Hofstadter and Emanuel’s Surfaces and Essences explores the idea of categorisation in a more serious way.
Is it right to call this a theory?
A theory must be able to make predictions, is this not more of an interpretation?
Chicken soup is obviously a salad
Think I just found my new icebreaker
The problem here is the assumption that modifiers can be safely ignored.
In the same way that veggie chicken is, obviously, not chicken, a bowl full of potatoes and mayonnaise is not a salad. It is a potato salad, and the word “potato” is doing too much heavy lifting to omit.
If I asked someone to get me a salad, and they came back with a potato salad, I’d assume they were pranking me.
This is why dictionaries list multiple definitions for words.
Mayonnaise and potatoes are called potato salad? Is that some US thing? Where I am from, a potato salad is sliced cooked potatoes, onions, salt, sunflower oil and some vinegar. Much closer to a salad that than mayonnaise abomination.
Maybe so? I mean, I’m exaggerating a little, but those are the two primary ingredients of most of these non-salad “salads” that I would find in a typical diner or supermarket.
Potato salad, egg salad, macaroni salad, and tuna salad are fundamentally mayonnaise, potato/egg/macaroni/tuna, and spices. Probably some chopped onion and herbs as well. They are often nearly-homogenous glop.
I’m sure there are less offensive ways of making these things, and perhaps I would actually consider some of them “salads”. But yes, the glop I described is commonly called “____ salad”. I don’t think it would be reasonable to call them “salads” with no qualifier. These are compound phrases, and it’s best not to get stuck on the etymology.
You can also call a poorly-written headline “word salad”. And yet if I ordered a salad and got a copy of the New York Post, I would be very confused indeed.
France : I’d call cubed potatoes in mayonnaise a salad. A proper potato salad would have sliced pickles and diced ham, but still.
Salad Theory
A comprehensive, precise, and pedantic branch of set theory pertaining to food categorization.
Background
In our office, we sometimes enjoy pedantic conversations where we attempt to properly define ambiguous terms. Naturally, when the sandwich controversy took the world by storm around 2016[3], we were interested.
We talked a lot about sandwiches, then went beyond. The sandwich debates spun off numerous side discussions regarding the categorization of other foods. Fatefully, one coworker raised the question of whether a salad could be called a pizza.
The answer to that question shocked and appalled us. Inescapably, a pizza was actually a salad.
Many heated lunchtime conversations ensued. We attacked the problem from different angles. We debated the merits of novel definitions. People got sick of it and avoided some of us at lunch.
But the truth could not be avoided. Begrudgingly, the office pedants were forced to reach an agreement: All edible foods[1] are salads.
We wrote up our conclusions in an internal document in May 2017. We were content to keep this dark knowledge to ourselves, but alas. Spurred by the release of food category theories which clearly misrepresent the nature of salads[4], the time has come to share our findings with the world.