But Seriously, Why?
A question: what is the point of putting croutons in a salad?
Let me give you a moment to recover from the sheer depth of that question.
Okay, so: I understand the purpose of croutons in a salad. A little carb, a little added crunch, a little extra salt and flavor. I get that and do not deny that croutons are delicious. I was the kid who would snack on a Dixie cup full of croutons after school. As a full time emotional eater I promise you I understand the tastiness aspect of the crouton.
It is the practicality that gives me pause.
Salads are already difficult to eat without croutons. They almost always require the use of two pieces of silverware: a fork to stab the pieces that are stab-able and a knife to scooch everything else onto the fork. You then have to balance the half-stabbed and half-scooped up pieces to your mouth, which can be precarious. That is assuming that all the lettuce pieces are actually small enough to fit in a human mouth. If the lettuce is large and leafy then you also have to contend with fitting a too large leaf into your mouth, inevitably opening the mouth super wide and revealing all the remnants of chewed up salad that are already in there to your table-mates. If there is dressing on the salad, it will end up on your face no question, especially with the big leafy salads. When you have a chopped salad, to combat the leafiness problem, then nothing is large enough to stab and you might as well eat the salad with a spoon.
If I’m going to eat a salad I prefer to do so on my own for all of the reasons listed above. Plus, I’m not actually civilized enough to do the fork/knife combo thing very well so I just stab relentlessly, chase salad pieces around the plate trying to scoop with the fork, and then end up using my fingers.
Adding croutons to the mix just increases the challenge of eating an already difficult food. In order to be able to stab a crouton without pulverizing it to a tasty dust, I think we might need special, pointier forks. Or perhaps the solution is stabbing with less ferocity. But then, not all croutons are made equally. Some are more porous and receptive to tines while others are almost like tiny bricks that are clearly not meant to be stabbed at all, but must be scooped up. Clearly there is not one perfect level of stabbing strength that will work for all croutons.
It just doesn’t make sense. We’ve taken an already challenging food and made it more challenging. Why? Why do this to ourselves?
I could Google and quickly learn the origin of the crouton, but I’m not interested in facts. I am more interested in my own conspiracy theory surrounding croutons. It is as follows.
Ask anyone: salads are probably one of the most “ladylike” things one can eat. A man can eat a salad, obviously, but I’m saying that according to a lot of television, movies, and books, women like to eat salads. For lunch, for dinner, on dates, basically all the time women are eating salads in popular culture. When they do so on screen they are dainty and civilized and never get dressing on their faces or drop a forkful of salad mixings on their shirt.
This sets up unrealistic expectations for women. Say a woman is attending a business lunch or on a date a salad is served. The expectation will be that she can eat a salad all prim and proper, never dropping anything on herself, never violently stabbing at the food on the plate. This is not reality of the situation so this woman will, in an effort to not look like a feral animal, eat slowly and carefully using both knife and fork. This requires a good deal of focus, so perhaps she is distracted from the business conversation. Or maybe she misses a joke that her date tells because she’s trying not to make a fool of herself with her food. Or maybe, knowing that a salad is a losing battle in polite company, she will simply go hungry.
Salads are a test. A test we are doomed to fail. This test, set by popular culture and societal expectations, is yet another way that our companions, business or personal, can judge us and find us wanting. “Did you see her eat that salad?” “She can’t even eat a salad like a human, how can we trust her with this account?” “Ugh, she stabbed that crouton so viciously, I think she might be crazy, I can’t date her.”
It’s not right. And adding croutons simply exacerbates the problem: a food that is almost impossible to eat with a fork added to a food that is categorically eaten with a fork. It’s just another way to keep us down.
It is possible that I am overthinking this. But I’m just saying, seriously, why with the croutons?
