DIGESTIVE VALUE OF SOUR SALADS.
Salad goes with chicken as the piano goes with a song. To eat lettuce with the cheese, as many Englishmen and not a few Americans do, is preposterously absurd. As for putting sugar on lettuce I cannot write down my opinion, for it is not fit for print. Salad cries for vinegar, as a parched plant cries for rain.
Vinegar is not only agreeable to the senses of taste and smell, and most refreshing, especially in summer, but it plays a very important rôle in the digestion of food.
It has been said that God sent us our food and the devil our cooks. This is not always the case, but the devil certainly inspired the man who taught that, in mixing a salad dressing, the vinegar should be added by a miser.
This maxim, widely accepted, has done a great deal of harm, not only in spoiling many millions of dishes for the palate, but in preventing salads from heading off dyspepsia, with all its evil consequences.
Many physicians have deplored the insufficiency of fat in the average American's diet. Fat is especially important as a source of energy, and also because fat meat is more savory and appetizing than lean meat. Furthermore, physiologists have shown by laboratory experiments that the presence of fat in meat or vegetable dishes makes them yield a larger degree of nutriment (apart from what it contributes itself).
Professor John C. Olsen of the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute says that "fats and oils furnish fully half the energy obtained by human beings from their food. Fats also exert a beneficial influence on the digestive process, so that a diet without fat is dry and unpalatable."
The only drawback is that fat makes the food "rich" and difficult of digestion—unless the cook is an artist.
This is why so many persons exclude it from their dietary, at the cost of energy in men and the beauty of health in women.
It is here that salad comes to the rescue. The vinegar in it, if genuine, excites by its fragrance and acidity the digestive glands not only in the mouth and the stomach, but in the pancreas, which acts on all the constituents of food, particularly the fats.
The pancreas is a gland near the stomach; it secretes the juice known as pancreatic and pours it into the duodenum, or small intestine, which—some ten or fifteen feet in length, is folded about it. To prevent intestinal indigestion there must be an abundant flow of pancreatic juice, and this flow is stimulated by the vinegar in the salad we eat and other acids in our food.
On this point the greatest living authority on the subject, Professor Pawlow, makes the following extremely important remarks:
... an acid reaction is not only necessary for an efficient action of the peptic ferment, but is at the same time the strongest excitant of the pancreatic gland. It is even conceivable that the whole digestion may depend upon the stimulating properties of acids, since the pancreatic juice exerts a ferment action upon all the constituents of the food. In this way acids may either assist digestion in the stomach where too little gastric juice is present, or bring about vicarious digestion by the pancreas where it is wholly absent. It is easy, therefore, to understand why the Russian peasant enjoys his kwas with bread. The enormous quantity of starch which he consumes, either as bread or porridge, demands a greater activity upon the part of the pancreatic gland, and this is directly brought about by the acid. Further, in certain affections of the stomach, associated with loss of appetite, we make use of acids, both from instinct as well as medical direction, the explanation being that they excite an increased activity of the pancreatic gland, and thus supplement the weak action of the stomach. It appears to me that a knowledge of the special relations of acids to the pancreas ought to be very useful in medicine, since it brings the gland—a digestive organ at once so powerful and so difficult of access—under the control of the physician.
It is obvious from these disclosures that if every American family followed the French custom of eating a sour salad at least once a day there would be very much less intestinal indigestion, which is even more distressing than indigestion in the stomach.
It is further obvious that Fletcherizing, or "mouth work," alone does not avert indigestion, for saliva has no effect on fats. The pancreas takes care of these, particularly if aided by acid ingredients in our food.
Probably no detail of the French menu is therefore so important to us as the daily sour salad.
An astonishingly small number of American families know what a delicious and hygienically valuable dish salad is with a French dressing of good olive oil and pure, fragrant vinegar.
There is very little nourishment in salad leaves until the oil has been added; and the oil is what we need, with the vinegar to help digest it.
The two words I have just italicized explain why so many Americans imagine they do not like salads with vinegar and oil dressing. Unless the oil is good and the vinegar pure and fragrant such a salad does no good but may do much harm; and it is seldom that one can buy good oil and vinegar in a grocery store.
Of all the food adulterators none are more rascally and abundant than the makers of artificial vinegar. Pure vinegars made of cider, wine, or malt can be sold at a very good profit to the manufacturer and dealer at from ten to twenty cents a quart; but this profit does not satisfy the swinish greed of the adulterators and unscrupulous grocers. By using acetic acid, a by-product of the distillation of deadly wool-alcohol, they can make "vinegar" at a cost of two cents a gallon, or 90 cents a barrel, which retails at over $20.
The pure food law covers this case, but the fines inflicted are so trifling compared with the gains, that the adulterators regard them in the light of a joke and continue their profitable poisoning, though many of them have been before the courts two, three, or four times. Jail is what their crime calls for. This so-called vinegar is in most cases injurious to the health of those who consume it, and by its lack of agreeable fragrance it discourages the healthful practice of eating sour salads.
It is foolish to get vinegar of the nearest corner grocer unless you know he is honest. It is best to buy it in the sealed bottles of firms which have a national or international reputation for fair dealing.
The same caution should be observed in purchasing olive oil. Do not buy it of a grocer who exposes his bottles in the show window. If he does not know that sunlight spoils the best olive oil, he is not likely to know, or care, what the best oil is.
Among the adulterants used to cheapen olive oil small quantities of castor oil, lard oil, fish oil, and even petroleum have been found. More frequent are rapeseed and poppy-seed oil. Peanut oil is much used, but the most frequent adulterant is cottonseed oil, which costs only about one-fifth the price of high-grade olive oil and therefore offers great temptation to the dealer.
Cottonseed oil is not inferior in nutritive value to olive oil, and Dr. Wiley assures us that no objection can be made to it "from any hygienic or dietetic point of view." Of the three million barrels of it produced in this country every year, not less than two-thirds are consumed as food. It is "perfectly satisfactory," the doctor adds, "to those who have not acquired a taste for olive oil."
If you like cottonseed oil there is no reason in the world why you should not pour it into your salad bowl. But if you wish to enjoy the epicurean delights of true salads you must train your sense of smell and learn to distinguish between fragrant oil and cottonseed oil, which, at its worst, has a disagreeable flavor and at its best is practically odorless and tasteless.
It is the fragrance, the Flavor, of olive oil that keeps it in the market, boldly defying its cheap rivals.
A great many Americans who think they do not like olive oil know not what real olive oil is. They have been fooled by the adulterators. They may have been careful to buy bottles labeled "Pure Virgin Olive Oil"; but, as Dr. Wiley says, "this expression upon the label has been found in many instances of olive oil highly adulterated and belonging to the cheapest grade."
There are more than a dozen grades of olive oil. It varies with the locality it is grown in, the care taken in its manufacture, the season, and so on. The first pressing (virgin oil) is the best; the virgin oil of the month of May is finer than any other, and the best oil comes from Italy.
It is worth while to cultivate a "taste" for the finer kinds, for they are the most fragrant and digestible. Such oil is not only a table delicacy second to none, it is also used more and more by doctors for diseases of the stomach and other parts of the digestive tract. For gall stone it is almost a specific.
As a cosmetic, nothing equals olive oil. The beauty of Spanish and Italian women is owing largely to their daily and liberal use of it in salads and cooked foods. It improves the complexion and rounds out the lines of the form.
Eating salad is by far the most agreeable way to take olive oil. There are persons with whom all acids disagree; these unfortunates have to do without the fragrant vinegar; but they can easily learn to like salads with oil and salt alone. The taste is decidedly worth acquiring.
In making the dressing, oil should by all means be applied "by a spendthrift." "Put on as much as you think you can afford," I feel tempted to advise; but, of course, you can get the best results more cheaply by painting each leaf with oil or by thoroughly mixing the leaves with it before putting on the vinegar. Always make sure that there is no water in the bowl and that the leaves are well dried.
In hot weather the vinegar should be put on first, to make the salad more piquant and refreshing. One spoonful of vinegar (pure and fragrant, if you please) to every two of oil is not too much. Let the stirring be done "by a maniac," according to the old maxim, for it is most important.
Salt is a necessary ingredient, and a trifle of cayenne makes the salad more digestible. Black pepper is, to some epicures, an unwelcome intruder, though it is often used even in Paris restaurants, where I now find it necessary to add sans poivre in ordering a salad. Once in a while, for variety's sake, add a little mustard, or rub the inside of the big bowl (it must be big, and Russian lacquer is the best) with garlic. A few tablespoonfuls of meat gravy—particularly chicken gravy (from roast or fricassee) give additional richness and savor to the dressing.
If you can get no pure and fragrant vinegar, by all means use lemon juice as infinitely better than "vinegar" made of acetic acid and water. But if malt, wine or cider vinegar is at hand it is preferable to the lemon, which does not harmonize so well with oil. Lemon is too loud—too self-assertive—like a trombone added to a string quartet.
It is a subtle thing, this gastronomic instrumentation, and there are differences of opinion as in matters musical. There is nothing better than a glass of lemonade—except, perhaps, a glass of limeade;—in very warm weather it is a luxury to suck a lemon like an orange. But if a slice of lemon is put in my tea I lose the delicate aroma of the leaves, which I am after; and so with salads. The fragrance of vinegar is more delicate, and does not overpower the fragrance of the oil. On the other hand, in making mayonnaise, which is also a French dressing, having been invented by the Marshal de Richelieu, and which is often used for green salads as well as for meat and fish salads, lemon is perhaps preferable to vinegar. Apparently the addition of the yolks of raw eggs to the other ingredients prevents the lemon tone from being too loud. With sardines, also, a lemon is all right, because their own flavor is not so weak as to be easily routed.
In remote regions, where pure olive oil cannot be obtained, a very fair substitute for French salad dressing may be provided by following the practice of Belgians and Germans of putting small cubes of fried bacon into the vinegar. Sometimes the vinegar, thus oiled, is heated and then poured over the leaves. That wilts them but makes a piquant dish for a change. In one way or another, have a sour salad with your dinner, especially if it includes fat food, for the reasons given.