The art of cookery

A dinner salad should rarely, if ever, be heavy or complex. It should be of fresh fruits or vegetables, simply dressed, and delicately served. And the heavy and more complex salads should be served alone, or at a less hearty meal. In no department of cookery is a more analytical study of relative flavors needed than in that of salad-making. And the greatest care should be observed in handling salad materials, not to destroy their natural flavors by mixing together those which do not make a harmonious combination, or by using with them an inappropriate, or too highly seasoned, dressing. Each kind of fruit, vegetable, meat, or fish designed for salad-making should be regarded as belonging to a distinct class ; and its peculiar requirements in that direction should be considered, and only such things be mingled, or served, with it as will best develop its especial flavor and render it most appetizing and attractive. The dressing of a salad should invariably be suited to the peculiar flavor and condition of that particular salad, and whenever two or more edibles are mingled together in a mixed salad, they should be selected with especial reference to the effect each will have upon the other. CLASS I. FRUIT SALADS. Many fruits served at breakfast as a relish, and after dinner in the form of dessert, are also frequently served at dinner as a salad, notably among such being strawberries, currants, and oranges. 270 The Art of Cookery. A great variety of salads may be prepared in the same manner from different fruits, but in their preparation it should be borne in mind that when two or more fruits are so mingled, one of them should be chosen with especial reference to giving the mixture flavor, and the others mainly to give it bulk. Pine-apples, bananas, and a dozen other fruits that readily suggest themselves, possess flavor enough to make palatable twice the bulk of less sapid fruit. The distinctive character of finely flavored food-stuffs should not be destroyed or obscured by mingling them together indiscriminately. And there can be no grosser culinary blunder than to combine two highly flavored fruits in one dish. Such a combination is opposed to the principles that govern salad-making, and is a direct violation of the laws of harmony that should control all food preparations. Strawberry Salad. — Select large strawberries with long stems. Serve two or three to each guest, on a fancy dish, and place beside each dish a tiny cup containing pulverized sugar. Currant Salad. — Select perfect stems of large currants, and serve like strawberries. Orange Salad. — Select perfect, medium-sized oranges. Wash and wipe them. Divide the peel into rather small sections, at the blossom end, and loosen from the orange about three fourths of its length. Curl in, bend out, or partly cut away, according to fancy, these sections of peel. Carefully remove the thick white covering, leaving the delicate skin of the orange pulp unbroken. Separate the sections of orange at the end from which the peel has been removed, and with a fork twist out the Salad- Making. 271 core. Pick out the seeds, and serve the prepared orange with a spoonful of whipped cream, sweetened, or oil or cooked mayonnaise dressing, placed in the opening from which the core has been removed.