Macedonia (food)

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For other uses, see Macedonia.

Macedonia or macédoine is a salad composed of small pieces of fruit or of vegetables.

Fruit macedonia or macédoine de fruits is a fruit salad and is a common dessert in France, Italy, Spain and Latin America.

Vegetable macedonia or macédoine de légumes nowadays is usually a cold salad or hors d'oeuvre of diced vegetables, in France often including red beans. It is sometimes mixed with mayonnaise combined with aspic stock, making it essentially the same as a vegetarian Russian salad. Macédoine de légumes is also a hot vegetable dish consisting of the same vegetables served with butter.^[1]

The word comes from the French macédoine, which was coined in 18th-century France and may perhaps allude to the diverse origin of the peoples of Alexander's Macedonian Empire. It is sometimes said that it refers to the ethnic mixture in Ottoman 19th century Macedonia, but the chronology and contemporary sources do not support this interpretation. Macedoine can be used of any medley of unrelated things, not necessarily edible. ^[2]

[edit] References

^ Larousse Gastronomique
^ Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford, 1999. ISBN 0-19-211579-0. Littré. Larousse du XIXe. OED s. macedoine gives 1740 as the earliest French usage; the on-line edition (as of December 27, 2006) refers to the derivation from Alexander as "not fully established". The earliest English uses are from Henry Luttrell's poetry, in 1820; and his notes to the revised edition.