Yes, the article on salads in the French magazine calls it by the name we often used for the dandelion when we were children. Come to think of it, if you look up dandelion in Harrap's dictionary, it gives only pissenlit. The article mentioned does admit there are other "popular names" for it such as dent de lion or lion's tooth, or mole's salad or monk's crown. The Greeks, we are told gave it the name Taraxados - meaning it looks after the eyes, for they used it against ocular troubles. But the particular use of this plant in salads is to tone you up after the winter. It was always there before traditional salads were ready (pre-supermarkets that is). There is a warning note: watch that you're not gathering from a field that has been sprayed with some pesticide. It is eaten raw, of course, as salad; the roots have for long been roasted and ground to make a sort of coffee; there is a dandelion wine and in one part of France they make a jelly from the flowers.
Even in Mrs Beeton's time (1860) salads were meant to be varied. She even quotes a poem about them: "Oh, great and glorious and herbaceous treat/'Twould tempt the dying ancorite to eat." And away back 300 years ago John Evelyn, the great diarist and gardener, was piling on the herbs and vegetables to his salad recipes. Indeed it is said that his book Acetaria lists as many as 73 possible ingredients for a salad. Most of us would think that some lettuce with five or six of our own proudly-grown herbs was the height of invention. Evelyn, according to Acetaria, edited by Christopher Driver, tells us that each leaf or vegetable should play its part.
"Like the Notes in Music in which there should be nothing harsh or grating." One recipe is given in a recent Country Life with between 30 and 30 ingredients, cooked and raw, ranging from almonds, olives, cornelians (a kind of cherry), capers, berberries, red-beet, buds of nasturtium, broom, puralan stalk, sampier, ash-keys and much more and tells you to mince them, strew them with candied flowers and quite a lot more. This is called, in Evelyn's words, "Sallet-allsorts". At the end of the recipe there is a note in italics, probably by the publisher: "Some of these ingredients could be toxic." So, not too much zeal. Y