Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A salad of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, and onions, often arranged in rows on lettuce and served with vinegar and oil.
  • noun A mixture or assortment; a potpourri.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Originally, an Italian dish consisting of chopped meat, eggs, anchovies, onions, oil, etc.
  • noun Hence A mixture of various ingredients; an olio or medley; a hotchpotch; a miscellany.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A mixture of chopped meat and pickled herring, with oil, vinegar, pepper, and onions.
  • noun Hence, a mixture of various ingredients; an olio or medley; a potpourri; a miscellany.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A food consisting of chopped meat and pickled herring, with oil, vinegar, pepper, and onions.
  • noun Hence, any mixture of various ingredients; an olio or medley; a potpourri; a miscellany.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a collection containing a variety of sorts of things
  • noun cooked meats and eggs and vegetables usually arranged in rows around the plate and dressed with a salad dressing

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French salmigondis, probably from Old French salemine, salted food (from Vulgar Latin *salāmen; see salami) + Old French condir, to season (from Latin condīre; see condiment).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French salmigondis ("seasoned salt meats"), from Middle French salmigondin, probably related to Middle French salomene ("hodgepodge of meats or fish cooked in wine"), from Old French salemine.

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Examples

  • Normally I am suspicious of domestic perfection, but with the holiday chaos and the unexpected visitors pouring in, it would have been nice not to have had to apologize for the snarled salmagundi of unfinished decorating.

    Miami Nice Sara Ruffin Costello 2011

  • A tablespoon of this and a teaspoon of that and I soon had a fragrant salmagundi redolent with flavors that bespoke romantic evenings in Marrakech.

    One Big Table Molly O’Neill 2010

  • The big mistake the author is making, of course, is that the place he is happy to be destined for in the next life will probably be chock full of the clerical salmagundi he, understandably, wants to avoid in this.

    Who wants to go to a heaven full of clerical flotsam? « Anglican Samizdat 2009

  • Everytime I glance at the TV schedule it is enough to make me feel that I would rather go out and shoot pictures of clouds than stay in and watch the dismal salmagundi of game shows, repeats, and soap operas.

    Blog De Ganz | Archive | May 2006

  • Go ahead and act like you know what a salmagundi is while you run to get the dictionary or google the definition.

    Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: 2005

  • Go ahead and act like you know what a salmagundi is while you run to get the dictionary or google the definition.

    Having Too Much Fun 2005

  • I shall dress her a dish of salmagundi — I shall cook a hash — compound a stew — toss up an OMELETTE

    The Life of Charlotte Bronte 2002

  • The list of these offerings goes on for pages and shows how faithful to the medieval kitchen France was as late as 1547, when this book appeared.44 There are cold roast loins of veal spiced with powdered sugar, salmagundi, blood puddings, pork chops with onion sauce, pasties, tarts, comfits, and clotted creams.

    Savoring The Past Wheaton Barbara Ketcham 1983

  • The list of these offerings goes on for pages and shows how faithful to the medieval kitchen France was as late as 1547, when this book appeared.44 There are cold roast loins of veal spiced with powdered sugar, salmagundi, blood puddings, pork chops with onion sauce, pasties, tarts, comfits, and clotted creams.

    Savoring The Past Wheaton Barbara Ketcham 1983

  • He danced the Lancashire clog-hornpipe; he rattled out puns and conundrums; yet did he contrive to infuse into all this mummery and buffoonery, into this salmagundi of the incongruous and the

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 Various

Comments

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  • This always sounded to me like the name of the old Italian guy who lives down the street. :-)

    February 21, 2007

  • adds flavor

    July 25, 2007

  • We use this at work as the eighteenth-century word for what we today would call a salad (e.g. tossed salad, chicken salad, ham salad, egg salad, or hell, all of them jumbled up together).

    December 9, 2007

  • ~ highly-seasoned mixed dish of meat, eggs, etc.

    January 18, 2009

  • Again, I think you forgot to close your bold, avivamagnolia. :)

    January 19, 2009

  • Just lose the bold altogether.

    January 19, 2009

  • JM thinks that by tossing a few letters together you end up with salamgundi

    February 1, 2009

  • "... a new supper dish grew out of the 'grand sallets' of the seventeenth century, the salmagundi, a large mounded salad layering minced cold meats with anchovies and pickles.*

    *Surviving still in Canada as Solomon Gundy."

    --Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 208

    January 17, 2017

  • Citation (as salmagundi) on hard fish.

    January 13, 2022