Bound the Table

Ingredients

• three heads -- the vegetable part
• two should be made into a salad
• one being substituted
• 1 think that it is wrong to put too many herbs into one salad -- as a salad
• one salad -- as a salad

Directions

1. taste of olive, &c. Later, lie supplied similar cases ready fitted witli ingredients, and sold tliem by hundreds. In the end he amassed some eighty thousand francs, with which — the guillotine having been superseded — he retired to his native country, where he lived happy ever after.

2. An English wit and divine — Sydney Smith — says of salads :

3. Oh, great and glorious and herbaceous treat !

4. ’Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat,

5. Back to the -world he’d turn his weary soul,

6. And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl.

7. But my object is neither to prove that salads are very good things, nor that English cooks do not know how to prepare them. Few will venture to deny either of these propositions. My purpose is to expound the art and mystery of dressing salads, as practiced by those who are masters of the subject.

8. The consideration of salads may be divided under three heads — the vegetable part, or foundation; the dressing, or sauce ; and the accessories. One of the chief requi- sites of a good salad is that it should be newly gathered, and, if you can get it free from mould and gravel, it is better not to wash it at all ; but if — as is more often the case — you must wash your salad, you cannot be too careful in draining all the water from it ; for eveiy drop of water left in a salad tends to spoil it, no matter what amount of talent has been bestowed upon the dressing. Great care is also necessary in picking the salad, so as to exclude every leaf in the least tainted or discoloured. It is a great mistake to cut up lettuce and endive, more Anglico, into fine shreds ; this operation at once destroys the fresh- ness, taste, and character of the dish. Of course I do not mean that Cos lettuces simply split in two should be made into a salad ; but there is a happy medium, which is

9. always best in most things. Besides, it is by no means the largest lettuces which make the best salads; the Cos lettuce, Gallice “ Romciine,” is all very well in its way, but the cabbage lettuce, the laitue pommee, when it is well pommee, is by far preferable. This should be cut into quarters like an orange, but when the exigences of ornamentation do not demand shapely pieces, the lettuce should not be outi’aged by the contact of steel. The leaves should be torn asunder by the agency of the fingers alone, the rent fragments can then be perfectly dried by being shaken in several napkins (a dry one being substituted for each as it become saturated) until each individual leaf is perfectly dry. The same remark will apply to endive, but this can better bear cutting up than lettuce, and may be treated accordingly ; but it is a mistake to put endive and lettuce in the same salad bowl. What is called corn salad goes better with endive, although 1 think that it is wrong to put too many herbs into one salad — as a salad ; as a condiment it is a different matter. As such, water-cresses, tarragon, burnet, garden-cress, American, and Australian cress, chervil, parsley, basil, mint, balm, marjoram, &c., may be used, but they must be used with discretion. Like- wise beetroot, cucumber, onions, celery, radishes, chives, and garlic, can be put into a salad with success if you know how to use them.

10. That artificial herb, mustard and cress, which is always associated with all salads by the British greengrocer, should never be used if it can be avoided. The American and Australian curled and perennial cresses are much pre- ferable in point of taste and appearance. These, as well as water-cress, tarragon, and burnet, must not be cut up too small, but the leaves only, especially in the case of water-cress, must be used, and not the stalks as well.