Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties | Page 3

classic times and Eastern lands. In the hot climates of the Orient, cucumbers and melons were classed among earth's choicest productions; and a resort ever grateful in the heat of the day was "a lodge in a garden of cucumbers."
At the Passover the Hebrews ate lettuce, camomile, dandelion and mint,--the "bitter herbs" of the Paschal feast,--combined with oil and vinegar. Of the Greeks, the rich were fond of the lettuces of Smyrna, which appeared on their tables at the close of the repast. In this respect the Romans, at first, imitated the Greeks, but later came to serve lettuce with eggs as a first course and to excite the appetite. The ancient physicians valued lettuce for its narcotic virtue, and, on account of this property, Galen, the celebrated Greek physician, called it "the philosopher's or wise man's herb."
The older historians make frequent mention of salad plants and salads. In the biblical narrative Moses wrote: "And the children of Israel wept again and said, We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick."
In his second Eclogue, Virgil represents a rustic maid, Thestylis, preparing for the reapers a salad called moretum. He wrote, also, a poem bearing this title, in which he describes the composition and preparation of the dish.
A modern authority says, "Salads refresh without exciting and make people younger." Whether this be strictly true or not may be an open question, but certainly in the assertion a grain of truth is visible; for it is a well-known fact that "salad plants are better tonics and blood purifiers than druggists' compounds." There is, also, an old proverb: "Eat onions in May, and all the year after physicians may play." What is health but youth?
Vegetables, fish and meats, "left over,"--all may be transformed, by artistic treatment, into salads delectable to the eye and taste. Potatoes are subject to endless combinations. First of all in this connection, before dressing the potatoes allow them to stand in bouillon, meat broth, or even in the liquor in which corned beef has been cooked; then drain carefully before adding the oil and other seasonings.
Of uncooked vegetables, cabbage lettuce--called long ago by the Greek physician, Galen, the philosopher's or wise man's herb--stands at the head of salad plants. Like all uncooked vegetables, lettuce must be served fresh and crisp, and the more quickly it is grown the more tender it will be. When dressed for the table, each leaf should glisten with oil, yet no perceptible quantity should fall to the salad-bowl. Watercress, being rich in sulphuretted oil, is often served without oil. Cheese or eggs combine well with cress; and such a salad, with a sandwich of coarse bread and butter, together with a cup of sparkling coffee, forms an ideal luncheon for a picnic or for the home piazza. Indeed, all the compound salads,--that is, salads of many ingredients,--more particularly if they are served with a cooked or mayonnaise dressing, are substantial enough for the chief dish of a hearty meal. Their digestibility depends, in large measure, on the tenderness of the different ingredients, as well as upon the freshness of the uncooked vegetables that enter into their composition.
A salad has this superiority over every other production of the culinary art: A salad (but not every salad) is suitable to serve upon any occasion, or to any class or condition of men. Among bon vivants, without a new salad, no matter how recherch�� the other courses may be, the luncheon, or dinner party, of to-day does not pass as an unqualified success.
While salads may be compounded of all kinds of delicate meats, fish, shellfish, eggs, nuts, fruit, cheese and vegetables, cooked or uncooked, two things are indispensable to every kind and grade of salad, viz., the foundation of vegetables and the dressing.
=The Dressing.=
Salads are dressed with oil, acid and condiments; and, sometimes, a sweet, as honey or sugar, is used. A perfect salad is not necessarily acetic. The presence of vinegar in a dressing, like that of onions and its relatives, on most occasions should be suspected only. Wyvern and other true epicures consider the advice of Sydney Smith, as expressed in the following couplet, "most pernicious":--
"Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown, And twice with vinegar procured from town."
Aromatic vinegars, a few drops of which, used occasionally, lend piquancy and variety to an every-day salad, can be purchased at high-class provision stores; but the true salad-maker is an artist, and prefers to compound her own colors (i.e., vinegars); therefore we have given several recipes for the same, which may be easily modified to suit individual tastes.
Indeed, the dressing of a salad, though in the early days of the century considered a special art,--an art that rendered