What does “essoreuse à salade” mean in French?

An essoreuse à salade is the spinning basket that flings the water off washed lettuce — a salad spinner. It’s a tidy bit of French word-building: take the verb essorer (to wring out, spin dry), add the -euse ending that turns a verb into the machine that does it, and you get essoreuse, the thing that does the wringing.

That same -euse / -eur pattern builds a whole kitchen and laundry vocabulary: laver gives a lave-linge sense of “washer,” and a tumble dryer that spins is a sèche-linge with an essorage cycle — the spin cycle. Spot essorer on your washing machine dial and you’ll know it’s about to spin the water out.