Asklemmy

Have a look at the bottle of ranch dressing, and count all the chemicals in there. Is the count of ingredients necessary for a salad now OK?

Does "word salad" count?

Otherwise, 2, a vegetable and a dressing. Because nobody would call a bag of carrot sticks a salad.

When will the divorce be final?

To bolster your point I regularly make something I call cucumber onion salad with cucumber, white onion, and oil w herbs, salt and pepper. To me, it's a salad if it focuses on seasoned raw ingredients, esp vegetables, served cold. There's also the confusion over things like chicken/tuna/egg deli salads focused on being eaten as a sandwich or w crackers, and Midwest "salads" for which all rules seem to be moot except that it's likely served cold.

Cut is as a prep step and it becomes a salad.

Those ingredients you listed are literally the ingredients to a dish called cucumber salad. Though usually the dressing is more of an vinegary Italian dressing instead of ranch. Just Google it.

https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/cucumber-salad

For me a salad is minimum of two uncooked ingredients.

I mean when you put chopped iceberg lettuce and tomatoes, it's a salad... So... Two?

My girlfriend calls lettuce salad. A bowl of lettuce she calls a salad

I've often had spinach, some shredded cheese, and a vinaigrette and called it salad.

There is a centuries-old simple salad recipe involving just cucumbers, onions, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper.

Anyone saying you can't have a salad out of cucumber, onions, and dressing...is wrong.

Two ingredients and a "dressing" is a salad.

If no dressing, then three ingredients or more.

Also, chicken caeser salad is a salad, and it has starch/bread.

Potato and Mayo = potato salad. So I would say two is the minimum. A bowl of lettuce on its own is not a salad. A salad is a classification of coke, (mainly) vegetable based dishes.