Caesar Salad

The egg does double duty: lecithin for the emulsion, and body — it's what turns "oil and lemon juice" into something that coats a leaf rather than running off it. If you're nervous about raw egg, know that commercial mayonnaise exists precisely because this emulsion is stable and safe when made with fresh eggs and used promptly; still, if you'd rather skip it, a spoon of good mayonnaise or Dijon mustard will emulsify the oil just as well — mustard has its own natural emulsifiers, which is why French dressings so often lean on it.

Lemon juice and vinegar aren't decoration, they're the acid that cuts the richness of two kinds of oil and the fat in the Parmesan — without it the whole plate tastes flat and greasy. Worcestershire sauce is doing something subtler: it's fermented, anchovy-based, salty-savoury — it gives the dressing the background hum of umami that a classic Caesar needs without you ever tasting "fish." If you have no Worcestershire, a mashed anchovy fillet or even a dab of fish sauce gets you closer than leaving it out entirely.

Two oils, vegetable and olive, is a cost-and-flavour compromise, not a rule carved in stone. Straight olive oil can turn bitter and overpowering once blended hard and fast; a neutral oil — "any oil with no smell of its own," sunflower or rapeseed will do — carries the emulsion without shouting over the lemon and garlic, while the smaller measure of olive oil keeps some of that character in. Use what's in your cupboard; just don't go all one way with a very assertive extra-virgin, or the dressing stops tasting like Caesar and starts tasting like salad dressing from a bottle.

Romaine lettuce is chosen for its rib — it's sturdy enough to hold dressing and stay crunchy instead of wilting into mush the way a soft butterhead would. If your shop doesn't stock romaine, a firm cos lettuce (same family, often sold under either name here) or even the crunchier inner leaves of a Little Gem will survive the dressing better than anything delicate.

The croutons are there to answer a real problem: a Caesar made only of leaves and sauce has no crunch and no carbohydrate, so it reads as a side dish, not a meal. Frying stale-ish baguette cubes in oil infused with garlic — rather than tossing raw garlic into the salad — gives you the aroma without the raw bite that lingers on your breath for the rest of the afternoon; this is the same logic behind garlic bread and garlic-infused oils generally, the flavour moves into the fat, the harshness stays behind in the clove.

The chicken turns a salad course into Sunday-lunch-worthy plate of food, which is probably why it ended up a fixture on British menus — protein justifies calling it dinner. The marker to watch isn't the clock, it's the breast firming up and the centre losing its pink translucency; press it and it should spring back rather than feel soft and yielding. A flat domestic hob doesn't throw the fierce, even heat a restaurant stove does, so don't expect a thick breast to be done at the same mark every time — a thinner, butterflied piece cooks faster and more evenly than a thick one left whole, and that's worth doing before it ever hits the pan.

Parmesan shavings, not grated dust, because shaved pieces hold their shape and give you a hit of salt and savour in bites, rather than disappearing invisibly into the dressing. A vegetarian hard cheese of similar age and saltiness works if Parmesan proper isn't to hand, though the flavour won't be quite as sharp.