All Hail the Goddess!

Seems everything old is new again, and the 1970s are having their moment—in fashion, music, film, and oddly, food. No, I don’t mean Jell-O salads, Hamburger Helper, or cheese logs (though as a child of the ‘70s, Jell-O and HH were on rotation at my family’s dinner table). I’m talking about the Goddess of the salad world—Green Goddess dressing.

On a recent visit to Quaintrelle here in Portland, I was treated to a plate of radicchio and other bitter winter greens and baby turnips nestled on a bed of Green Goddess dressing. I haven’t had a salad with Green Goddess since I was a teen at my parents’ table, so my curiosity was piqued. I was astonished. Herby, salty, tangy and vibrantly spring green, it was the perfect foil to the sturdy greens and sweet baby turnips. Since then, I’ve seen Green Goddess turn up in many forms on numerous menus—my inner Food Geek knew I had to do a deep dive into this forgotten treasure’s resurgence….

Growing up, salads consisted of iceberg lettuce, a grated carrot, and maybe a sliced radish or two, topped with Thousand Island dressing. Simple, and it got the job done. When the ‘70s rolled around, folks started eating more salads to bolster their health. A salad-dressing wave was launched, and companies like Wishbone, Seven Seas and Kraft rode it for all it was worth:

Yikes.

And then there’s Green Goddess:

In the late ‘70s, Wish-Bone Green Goddess made her mysterious and exotic appearance on my grandmother’s dinner table—it blew my pre-teen mind, “what an unusual color and flavor—and what’s up with the avocado on the label—is there avocado in this?”

Thus started the trip down a culinary rabbit-hole. The name Green Goddess is great alliteration, but where does it come from? Turns out, Green Goddess has been around for a LONG time. The Palace Hotel in San Francisco created the Green Goddess Salad in honor of actor George Arliss for his performance in the silent film “The Green Goddess” in 1923! It was remade into a ‘talkie’ in 1930…

The dressing made its first appearance in the New York Times food section in 1948, and there have been no less than 10 iterations of the recipe in the paper since, using it for everything from salad dressing to meat marinade to sandwich spread. I did some recipe testing, including one from my vintage 1976 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, and here were my two favorites:

GREEN GODDESS CIRCA 1976 GREEN GODDESS CIRCA 2008

Give them a try—I promise you won’t have to bust out the platforms and polyester shirts, but you can if you want to!

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