Cassell's dictionary of cookery

The water cress has long been highly esteemed. It is found in great abundance on the edges of running streams, preferring clean water to that which is muddy. Care must be taken to distinguish it from the water-parsnip, which often grows with it, and which is poisonous. Burnet, another small-salad herb, is a perennial plant indigenous to Britain, and found in dry, upland, calcareous soils. It is occasionally cultivated in gardens. The leaves of the burnet are used in salads ; when lightly bruised, they smell like cucumber. They have a somewhat warm taste. Rape, a native of Britain, is sometimes grown in gardens, and its leaves are used for salad in the same way as mustard and cress. Salad Mixture.— Endeavour to have your salad herbs as fresh as possible; if you suspect they are not " morning gathered,'' they will be much refreshed b}' lying an hour or two in spring- water ; then carefully wash and pick them, and trim oft' all the worm-eaten, slimy, cankered, dry leaves ; and, after washing, let them remain a while in the colander to drain ; lastly, swing them gently in a clean napkin. "WTien properly picked and cut, arrange them in the salad dish, mix the sauce in a soup plate, and put it into an ingredient bottle, or pour it down the side of the salad dish, and don't stir it up till the mouths are ready for it. If the herbs be young, fresh gathered, trimmed neatlj', and drained dry, and the sauce-maker ponders patiently over the following directions, he cannot fail obtaining the fame of being a very accomplished salad-dresser : — Boil a couple of eggs for twelve minutes, and put them in a basin of cold water for a few minutes — the yolks must be quite cold and hard, or they will not incorporate with the ingredients. Rub them through a sieve with a wooden spoon, and mix them with a table-spoonful of water or fine double cream, then add two table-spoonfuls of oil or melted butter ; when these are well mixed, add, by degrees, a tea-spoonful of salt or powdered lump sugar, and the same of made mustard ; when these are smoothly united, add very gradually three table-spoonfuls of vinegar, rub it with the other ingredients till thoroughly incorporated with them ; cut up the white of the egg, and garnish the top of the salad with it. Let the sauce remain at the bottom of the bowl, and do not stir up the salad till it is to be eaten. We recommend the eaters to be mindful of the duty of mastication, without the due performance of which all undressed vegetables are troublesome company for the principal viscera, and some are even dangerously indigestible. — Br. Kitchiner. Salad Mixture, Quihi.— Rub the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs Arith the back of a wooden spoon till quite smooth, and beat in drop by drop three dessert-spoonfuls of fine salad oil. Add, just as slowly, six dessert-spoonfuls of vinegar, four of mushroom ketchup, three of anchovy essence, four salt-spoonfuls of salt, and four of mixed mustard. A spoonful SAL (795) SAL of thick cream mixed with a well-mashed floury potato will greatly improve this salad. Wash the lettuce, diy it perfectly, shred it finely, and just before it is wanted mix the salad dressing lightly with it.