Salads are dishes without a fixed structure. You can randomly rearrange the ingredients without changing it into another dish.
For example, a pizza is salad on top of dough, a burger is salad between buns, and a burrito is salad wrapped in a tortilla. But as a whole, pizzas, burgers, and burritos each have a strict, defined structure, so they aren't salads, they just contain a salad component.
Additionally, anything made mostly of liquid by volume is a soup or beverage, not a salad.
Watermelon pieces are made mostly of water, but are solid as a whole, not liquid. You can't pour them. And if you actually blend them into a liquid, then you get watermelon juice or soup. (Soup vs beverage is a distinction based on the mode of serving, in a glass vs bowl+spoon)
I think my main issue is that the spectrum goes from
entire melon -> salad -> slush? -> beverage
with decreasing side length of the cut pieces.
So both the fixed structure from your definition (" Salads are dishes without a fixed structure") and solid/liquid definition don't feel really tangible to me. YMMV
Comments
Salads are dishes without a fixed structure. You can randomly rearrange the ingredients without changing it into another dish. For example, a pizza is salad on top of dough, a burger is salad between buns, and a burrito is salad wrapped in a tortilla. But as a whole, pizzas, burgers, and burritos each have a strict, defined structure, so they aren't salads, they just contain a salad component. Additionally, anything made mostly of liquid by volume is a soup or beverage, not a salad.
A wedge salad has a fixed structure. Layered salads have a definite structure. Both are definitely salads.
Watermelon salad?
Watermelon pieces are made mostly of water, but are solid as a whole, not liquid. You can't pour them. And if you actually blend them into a liquid, then you get watermelon juice or soup. (Soup vs beverage is a distinction based on the mode of serving, in a glass vs bowl+spoon)
I think my main issue is that the spectrum goes from
entire melon -> salad -> slush? -> beverage
with decreasing side length of the cut pieces.
So both the fixed structure from your definition (" Salads are dishes without a fixed structure") and solid/liquid definition don't feel really tangible to me. YMMV