My significant other ate cucumbers and onion with some ranch. I called it a cucumber onion salad. She says there aren’t enough ingredients to call it a salad, because “it takes multiple ingredients”. I pointed out she had three and asked what the minimum is. She refuses to answer so I ask Lemmy.
If I heat pasta salad in the microwave, is it no longer a salad? Is a leftover portion of pasta a salad before it is reheated? I’m not sure temperature is a requirement.
Also I have to question calling two flavours of Jello “different things”, let alone calling 2 flavours of gelatine a salad, but I know Americans are more liberal with the word salad than other places.
Where I am you will rarely see the word salad used in relation to dishes that don’t contain some raw chopped vegetables, especially leafy green ones. Or it’s the dish’s imported original name, like potato salad. Fruit salad is the one exception to that, I think.
I could see an argument that past a certain temperature, you are now just eating pasta.