Is Snail Salad a"regionalism" (or even a word?)

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 1/27/03 3:50:09 PM, Bapopik at AOL.COM writes:


>    "Snail salad" should certainly be in the next volume of DARE.  It is an 
> American regionalism.  Whether it makes DARE and whether it receives good 
> citational evidence are separate questions.
> 

I'm certainly willing to be educated, but I found 8,000 hits for this on 
Google, from Hollywood to Rhode Island. It seems to me that anybody who eats 
seafood can conceive of seafood salad, and anybody who eats snails could well 
eat snail salad. So how can SNAIL SALAD be a genuine compound word at all, 
much less a regionalism? Maybe it could be an entry in a cookbook, but It 
APPEARS to be just an ordinary noun adjunct, like COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON or 
DICTIONARY MAKER or LEXICON INFLATER.