American
California Cobb Salad
The composed salad that defined American restaurant dining — every ingredient in its place, every bite balanced.
Recipe by Cyman Huang
Cooked, styled and photographed in his kitchen.
The Cobb salad was invented in 1937 at the Hollywood Brown Derby, where owner Robert Cobb improvised a late-night snack from whatever was in the kitchen and it ended up on the menu.
The genius of the Cobb is compositional: each ingredient — chicken, bacon, hard-boiled egg, avocado, tomato, blue cheese, and chives — is arranged in rows across the romaine and dressed at the table, ensuring that every forkful contains a precise combination of flavors and textures.
Watch it come together
Ingredients
For the salad
- 1 head romaine lettuce, chopped
- 1 head butter lettuce, torn
- 2 cooked chicken breasts, sliced or diced (roasted or poached)
- 6 strips thick-cut bacon, cooked and crumbled
- 3 large hard-boiled eggs, peeled and halved or quartered
- 2 ripe Hass avocados, diced
- 2 medium tomatoes, seeded and diced
- 4 oz Roquefort or blue cheese, crumbled
- 2 tbsp fresh chives, snipped
Red wine vinaigrette
- 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 clove garlic, grated
- ¾ cup olive oil
- 1 tsp sugar
- Kosher salt and black pepper
Method
- 1
MAKE VINAIGRETTE: Whisk together vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, Worcestershire, garlic, and sugar. Slowly whisk in the olive oil in a steady stream to emulsify. Season with salt and pepper and refrigerate until needed.
- 2
ARRANGE THE SALAD: Spread the chopped lettuce in a wide, shallow serving bowl or on individual plates. Arrange the toppings in neat rows across the lettuce in this order: chicken, bacon, eggs, avocado, tomato, blue cheese. Scatter chives across the top.
- 3
At the table, drizzle the vinaigrette evenly across all the rows and toss lightly so guests see the composed presentation before it's dressed.
Substitutions
- Chef's tip: the arrangement is the point. Take the extra minute to build neat rows — when you dress it at the table, each fork captures a cross-section of every flavor.
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