The Safety Reason That Wooden Salad Bowls Went Out Of Style

Thanks to the writings of a renowned foodie in the 1930s, Americans spent decades believing the only right way to make green salad was in an unvarnished, never washed wooden bowl that became seasoned from years of being rubbed with garlic and absorbing salad dressing oil. This led to the widespread appearance of such bowls in household kitchens throughout the United States.

According to George Rector, a restauranteur turned author and lecturer who also penned articles for the Saturday Evening Post (which was the periodical in which he publicized his salad bowl suppositions), these wooden dishes should only be wiped after use, never washed. The obvious flaw was that the continuous absorption of the oil and other salad ingredients lent more than the patina promised by the author. It resulted in the residue saturating the wood becoming rancid and extremely malodorous, not to mention increasing the potential for bacteria growth from lack of washing and proper care of the dish.

But the bad smells and sanitary concerns didn't deter Americans from loyally using the dishes, which had become must-have kitchen items thanks to Rector's writings. These mainstay salad vessels didn't begin to fade from popularity until other food writers began criticizing them in the 1960s, pointing out what everyone had accepted as normal: Those wooden bowls smelled horrible and were saturated with rancid oil.

Today, it is believed that food writer George Rector, who was known to embellish the truth, was deliberately pulling a fast one on the American public with his admonition to anoint wooden bowls with garlic and oil and to never wash them. His writings claimed the unwashed wooden salad bowls were a French practice, which wasn't true and something a person trained in the culinary arts in Paris would certainly have known. French salad eating etiquette is incredibly strict, but it doesn't involve the use of unwashed crockery. 

Rector constantly employed a tongue-in-cheek writing style — his articles in the Saturday Evening Post bore headlines like "A Touch of Eggomania" and "The Height of Shellfishness." He was also noted for embellishing tales of the famous people who dined in his restaurants in order to drum up publicity. So, the notion that he concocted his salad bowl admonition for sensational effect isn't difficult to fathom.

Commonly held tall tales about food are nothing new. Consider the mysterious food myth that is the 5-second rule. Rector's wooden bowl trend, thankfully, died out with the passage of time, but not everything he wrote was hokum. Though sardonic in tone, information he offered up generally had some merit. One valid tip that he published alongside the salad bowl sham survives in cookery today: rubbing plates and bowls with garlic to add subtle flavor.