Anonymous - 9-15-2003 at 10:40 PM
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/6773818.ht...
Sep. 14, 2003
Associated Press
SAN DIEGO - Rosa Maria Cardini, who turned the salad dressing recipe of her father, Caesar, into a multimillion-dollar business, has died. She was 75.
Cardini died Sept. 3 after being hospitalized with kidney failure.
She started in the salad dressing business at the age of 10 and helped to bottle her father's recipe, which the family sold from their station wagon
at Los Angeles' Farmers Market after moving from San Diego. The dressing had been developed at Caesar's Hotel, a Tijuana restaurant popular with
Hollywood celebrities such as Clark Gable and Jean Harlow that Cardini's father owned in the 1920s.
The Caesar salad dressing gained popularity in the 1940s, as the family distributed their bottled recipe around the country. By 1953, the
International Society of Epicures, a group of professional chefs based in Paris, called the Caesar salad "the greatest recipe to originate from the
Americas in 50 years."
Gourmets dispute the exact origins of the salad, with many crediting Cardini but others pointed to Chicago-based chef Giacomo Junia, who used
anchovies, croutons, eggs and Worcestershire sauce in his version.
Cardini's version used olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, egg, garlic, croutons and Parmesan.
After her father's death in 1956, Rosa Maria Cardini took control of the business, Caesar Cardini Foods Inc., based in Culver City. She patented the
Caesar recipe and 17 others.
In an interview with Business Wire magazine, Cardini described a "super Caesar" salad she made for 3,000 people at a Tijuana Super Bowl celebration in
1988.
"We hope to make it and be serving it in 15 minutes," Cardini said. "You can't let it sit, or you don't get a good salad."
Cardini never married and had no children.
Dave - 9-16-2003 at 08:51 AM
Cardini did NOT invent the Caesar salad. Livio Santini, his cook first made the salad which was his mothers recipe from Italy. One of his sons Aldo
lives near here in Baja and owns the Santini art gallery. It is located on the free road just north of the Sanoviv health spa,about a mile south of
Califia.