Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties | Page 3

Curried Eggs " " 186 Mushroom Cromeskies, ready for cooking " "
198 Prune Toast " " 198


PART I.
SALADS.
"Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting To spoil
such a delicate picture by eating."

INTRODUCTION.
At their savory dinner set Herbs and other country messes, Which the
neat-handed Phyllis dresses. --Milton.
Our taste for salads--and in their simplest form who is not fond of
salads?--is an inheritance from 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 recherché 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