“Mr. Frenchman, your countrymen are said to excel in the art of salad-making. Would you do my friends and myself the favor of mixing one for us?” 

Nestled within the pages of famed gastronomer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's 1825 treatise, The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, lies the story of a lesser-known French entrepreneur, Chevalier d’Albignac (1739–1825). Fleeing the French Revolution, d’Albignac brought with him to London the esteemed French reputation for expert salad-making. After a chance encounter with hungry and impressionable young Englishmen, he quickly secured a growing number of private appointments in the homes of London’s upper class, assembling salads and dressing them with freshly mixed vinaigrettes.

To capitalize on his success, d’Albignac developed the "Fashionable Salad-Maker" kit—a mahogany case that he and his servant carried on house calls. This portable gastronomic laboratory included vinegars, oils (with and without fruity flavors), soy, caviar, truffles, anchovies, ketchup, mustard, meat extracts (gravy), egg, salt, and pepper—essentially all the ingredients necessary to make what is now commonly known as "French dressing." Through his frequent salad demonstrations and the sale of his mass-produced cruet-boxes, d’Albignac amassed a small fortune and achieved international acclaim. Yet despite his successes, his story remains largely absent from mainstream culinary history.

In Fashionable Salad-Maker Kit (for Chevalier d’Albignac), Christopher Reynolds resurrects this overlooked narrative, creating a contemporary revival of d’Albignac’s endeavor. Reynolds’s reimagined salad kit offers a historical lens into food trends—a concept as relevant today as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. Drawing parallels between performance art and culinary practice, the artwork functions as a pseudo-historical artifact with contemporary utility. The kit assembles the ingredients and tools necessary to recreate d’Albignac’s dressing, but also includes Reynolds’s own modern addition: Monosodium Glutamate (MSG). The inclusion of MSG—an ingredient uncommon in traditional Western home cooking but ubiquitous in processed foods and pre-made dressings—highlights the contemporary consumer’s relentless pursuit of enhanced flavors.

In conjunction with the kit, Reynolds and active participants perform Salade du Chevalier d’Albignac, collaboratively preparing the salad named after d’Albignac himself. Both the Fashionable Salad-Maker Kit and Salade du Chevalier d’Albignac are influenced by Fluxus artist Alison Knowles and her seminal 1962 performance Make a Salad. Like Knowles, Reynolds seeks to collapse the distinction between high art and everyday life, emphasizing the often-overlooked ritual of preparing and sharing food.

Through historical storytelling and participatory performance, Reynolds addresses contemporary food issues, including economic class systems, mass production, and the rituals of preparation and consumption. By placing renewed emphasis on ingredients and instructions, he offers a historical and contemplative perspective on something as seemingly simple—and profoundly communal—as making a salad