Cookery and housekeeping

But salads are not confined to fresh green vegetables. All vegetables, dressed cold with oil and vinegar, belong to the same class. The cucumber, eaten raw with vinegar, oil, and pepper, is the most common form of salad in England, where, oddly enough, it is habitually served either with the fish or with the cheese. An excellent salad is made of cold slices of beetroot and Portugal onion (boiled) placed alternately on the dish, or of cold boiled asparagus, seakale, or cauliflower, or even of cold boiled potatoes sliced. The most elaborate form of salad is the Salade Russe, consisting of cold beans, carrots, olives, anchovies, and other condiments, which form a substantial, not an auxiliary, dish to be introduced towards the close of a dinner. It may here be remarked that the proper moment for serving and eating green salads is with roast meat, and more particularly with the game or poultry of the second course. There are people who, without being professed vegetarians, would rather eat a salad without meat than meat without a salad. Every one has different ideas of what a salad should be, and most English people start by saying, ' I never eat oil.' Now, the soul of a salad is its oil. Let the oil be fresh, got from the best Italian grocers, and kept in a cellar on its side. It ought not to be A A kept uncorked, and for many purposes it is best to make a hole through the cork and to drop the oil drop by drop. Some of the salads described here may, however, be made without oil, or by substituting the salad sauce of English country houses — a compound of cream, mustard, and vinegar. We begin by describing Madame's Salad, or that which a French lady, if she has two or three guests at table, prepares with her own hands. The lettuce has been cut ajid washed not more than an hour before dinner — and here let us mention that a salad cut early, and left in the scullery till 7 P.M., will never be a good thing, though it might have been had it not left the garden till the gardeners were ' coming off work ' at 6 P.M. Five minutes in very cold water is a good thing for lettuces ; they must then be placed in a wire basket, which is shaken so as to get rid of every drop of water which may adhere to the leaves. Madame's Salad. Put the yolk of a fresh egg in the salad bowl, and beat in it a teaspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of pepper, and a teaspoonful of mustard. Add two teaspoonsful oi vinegar and three tablespoonsful of oil. Beat and work all together. Tumble in the lettuce, and roll it round and round till it has worked up all the sauce. Russian Salad. Cut into small shapes the following vegetables : RUSSIAN SALAD. Potatoes Carrots Turnips Artichokes Cauliflower Spanish onions Capers OHves Parboil ; drain dry ; warm in butter ; drain again ; and let them cool. SHAPES OF CUT VEGETABLES. Prepare the day before some dry plain biscuits by soaking and colouring with spinach. Pass through a tamis. Beat four yolks of eggs up with oil and mustard, and stir in the biscuit preparation, and half a pint of cream ; add some small bits of chicken, tongue, or fish. Surround with aspic jelly and serve in a glass dish. July Salad.