The Shelley Winters Caesar

Or: Whose Salad Are You Really Tossing?

Ms. Winters prepares her mise en place

When does a thing stop being the thing its name implies? When you change one thing about a thing, does it necessarily become another thing?

A classic martini is made with gin, dry vermouth, and garnished with an olive. Exchange a pickled onion for the olive, and you have a Gibson. Swap out the gin, onion, and vermouth for Drambuie, marshmallows, and chocolate syrup, and you have what is called an abomination.

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When a celebrity attaches their name to a recipe, what makes it specifically theirs, apart from vanity? Are Oprah’s deviled eggs really more wicked than ordinary deviled eggs? Quick answer: Yes (It’s the horseradish). But what about the thousands of other celebrity-related recipe questions that remain unanswered, such as “Are Anne B. Davis’ Outer Space Chimichangas truly more stellar than their earthbound counterparts?” and “What makes Liberace’s Sticky Buns stickier than my grandmother’s?”

Science may one day solve these culinary mysteries.