poke salad

poke (“pokeweed”) + salad or sallet. “Poke salad” and “poke sallet” mean the same thing—carefully boiled pokeweed. Uncooked pokeweed is poisonous. Given that “salad” connotes “raw,” many speakers favor the original “sallet” which connotes “cooked greens.” (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

• poke salet, poke sallet, poke salat, polk salad

• enPR: pōk săʹləd IPA^(key): /ˌpoʊk ˈsæləd/
• (Appalachia, traditional or obsolete) IPA^(key): /ˌpoʊk ˈsælɪt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

poke salad (countable and uncountable, plural poke salads)

2. A food made from boiled pokeweed leaves, which are poisonous unless cooked properly.
   • 1921, T. S. Stribling, Birthright‎^[1]:

     The Harvard man went back into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee.

   • 2013, Carole J. Skelly, Dictionary of Herbs, Spices, Seasonings, and Natural Flavorings‎^[2], Routledge, →ISBN:

     Whereas to most people, “salad” is made with raw greens, “poke salad” shoots and greens must be cooked, the cooking water changed and discarded several times. […] There are many documented deaths from eating improperly prepared “poke salad.”

   • 2019 October 3, Abby Carney, “How Did This Poisonous Plant Become One of the American South’s Most Long-Standing Staples?”, in Saveur‎^[3], retrieved 6 June 2023:

     Despite the fact that the kudzu-like Phytolacca americana sprouts up all across North America, poke sallet, a dish made from the plant’s slightly-less-toxic leaves, is a regional thing, popular only to Appalachia and the American South.

4. (chiefly Southern US, Appalachia) Pokeweed, the leafy plant used to make such a dish.
   • 1968, Tony Joe White, “Polk Salad Annie”, in Black and White:

     If some of ya'll never been down south too much / I'm gonna tell you a little bit about this / So that you'll understand what I'm talking about / Down there we have a plant that grows out in the woods, and the fields / And it looks something like a turnip green / Everybody calls it polk salad

   Synonyms: poke, pokeweed, pocan (see more at pokeweed)

poke (“cubed raw fish”) + salad

• poké salad

• enPR: pō'kā săʹləd IPA^(key): /ˌpoʊ.keɪ ˈsæləd/

poke salad (countable and uncountable, plural poke salads)

2. A Hawaiian food made from diced raw fish, seasoning, diced fruit and vegetables, and sometimes rice.

   Synonym: poke bowl

   • 2017, Fodor's Southern California: with Los Angeles, San Diego, the Central Coast & the Best Road Trips‎^[4], Fodor's Travel, →ISBN:

     […] a wide range of creative seafood dishes (the Hawaiian-style poke salad with ahi tuna is a local favorite).

• poke (Hawaiian dish) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• salad