Salmagundi

For other uses, see Salmagundi (disambiguation).

Salmagundi is defined as

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

There are several variant spellings of salmagundi, e.g., salamagundi being common on the internet.

Salmagundi is purportedly a meal served on pirate ships. It is a stew of anything the cook had on hand, usually consisting of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, and onions, often arranged in rows on lettuce and served with vinegar and oil, and spiced with anything available.

The name was later corrupted to Solomon Gundy in the eighteenth century. It seems likely that the name is connected with the children’s rhyme, Solomon Grundy. Solomon Gundy retains its food connotation today as the name given to a spicy Caribbean paste made of mashed pickled-herrings, peppers and onions.

Some famous authors have used Salmagundi in the titles of their works to convey the hodgepodge, potpourri nature:

• Washington Irving, "Salmagundi; or, The whimwhams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq." (1807).
• William Faulkner, "Salmagundi", 1932, Casanova Press.

Dark fantasy author Caitlín R. Kiernan named a central character if her short-story cycle, Tales of Pain and Wonder, Salmagundi Desvernine. The character is named for a painting by the Moravian artist Alphonse Maria Mucha, which was used by Whitman's in the 1920s to illustrate the lid of one of its candy sampler tins. Salmagundi Desvernine grows up on Pollepel Island in the Hudson River Valley, in the shadow of Storm King Mountain.

The quarterly literary journal Salmagundi has been published at Skidmore College since 1965. The Salmagundi Club or The Salmagundi Art Club was founded as the New York Sketch Club in 1871 and changed to its present name in the early 1900s.

The yearbook at Colgate University is known as Salmagundi. It was founded in 1907 by George Edward Harris III. Harris thought that his beloved institution of higher learning needed what he called "a end-of-the-year wrap up, wrap around, and wrap out."