Macedonia (food)

Macedonia

Macedonia with ice cream
Type Salad
Main ingredients Fruits or vegetables
Cookbook:Macedonia  Macedonia

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

Fruit Macedonia is a fresh fruit salad and is a common dessert in Greece, Romania, Spain,[1] France, Italy 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 similar to Russian salad. Macédoine de légumes is also a hot vegetable dish consisting of the same vegetables served with butter.[2]

In the 1940s and 1950s, in north Africa and Québec, Québec city especially, one could buy "de la macédoine" in cans packaged by a major company. It was usually a diced mixture of carrots and peas.

The word macedonia was popularised at the end of the 18th century to refer to mixed fruit salad, alluding to the diverse origin of the people of Alexander's Macedonian Empire.[3][4] 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 refer to any medley of unrelated things, not necessarily edible.[5]

See also

References

  1. "Make time for Macedonia" (January 28, 2006) The Times
  2. Larousse Gastronomique
  3. Juan Antonio Cincunegui (24 November 2002) "La palabra en el tiempo", Nuevo Siglo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
  4. Auguste Scheler (1888) Dictionnaire d'étymologie française d'après les résultats de la science moderne p. 313
  5. Alan Davidson, (1999) The Oxford Companion to Food, Oxford 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.