Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

Salad a la Belle Alliance. — Seakale Salad is supposed to be peculiar to All Souls’ College, Oxford, where the secret of making it is jealously preserved. The All Souls’ salads, which are invariably made by the junior Fellows, are indeed unrivalled, but this Salad of Wyvern's is nearly equal to an All Souls’ Seakale Salad. It makes an excellent luncheon dish. Take from four to six ounces of cold cooked chicken, and from two to three ounces (half the quantity) of cold cooked tongue. Cut both meats into julienne-like strips. Boil and set to get cold a quarter bundle of Seakale, then cut it into strips, using a silver dessert knife. Take a silver or china dish, make a bed at the bottom of it with some of the Seakale, over that arrange a layer of chicken and tongue, then more Seakale, sprinklingover each layer a seasoning of pepper and salt. Finish the arrangement in dome-shape, with strips of Seakale outside, and moisten the whole with mayonnaise sauce. Keep the Salad as cold as possible. Garnish round the base with halves of hard-boiled eggs, turned olives, and little heaps of broken jelly. (I am bound to say that Wyvern adds to the chicken and tongue 3S0 the contents of a very small tin of foie gras, freed from all fat, and cnt up into slices.) Lamb's Lettuce, or Corn Salad, the Mâche of French cooks, ought to he grown in every garden, besides, as Mrs. Earle says, “ in seasonless London everything is always to be bought.” The botanical name of Corn Salad is Valerianella olitoria. It is an annual, and in gardens should be sown four times a year at least, and watered if the weather is dry. Many people think Mâche, like Flageolets and Haricots, is a product peculiar to France. But nothing is more easily grown, and it is a most valuable Salad in early spring when other Salading is scarce. In fact, many seedsmen call Corn Salad Christmas Salad. Mustard and Cress. — Mustard and Cress, which are so much needed for small Salad and for Sandwiches, suffer from being grown together. Cress grows much slower than Mustard, and should be sown three days earlier, so as to have both in perfection together. Both should be sown as thickly as possible in shallow boxes. Or, if grown in the garden, their places should be often changed, as if the new roots of Mustard and Cress touch those of a previous crop they spoil at once. Mrs. C. W. Earle has an excellent plan for Spring Salads. Writing in May, she says : “All this last month we have been “ eating the thinnings of seedling Lettuces as Salad, and they “ are most delicious. All kinds of Lettuce seem to eat equally “ well ; they are grown in boxes in a frame. I first thought of “ eating them by seeing that they were thrown away to give “ room for those that were going to be planted out. I now “ purposely grow them in extra quantities and in succession, so “ that my Salads may never fall short. They make infinitely “ better Salad than the tough little brown Cos Lettuces grown “ with such care in frames all through the winter.” Stewed Haricot Beans, left to get cold, make an excellent winter Salad, mixed with tomatoes. Sir Henry Thompson says that the salad oil supplies the one nutritious element in which Haricots are deficient. They must be simmered for at least three hours. Salad of Cucumber with Tomatoes. — Peel and cut up a good-sized cucumber, not crosswise in the ordinary way but