Cheese Salad, or Mock Crab.
- ½ lb. pickled shrimps.
- ¼ lb. good old cheese.
- 1 tablespoonful salad oil.
- ½ teaspoonful cayenne pepper.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 1 teaspoonful white sugar.
- 1 teaspoonful made mustard.
- 4 tablespoonfuls celery or onion vinegar.
Mince the shrimps and grate the cheese. Work into the latter, a little at a time, the various condiments enumerated above, the vinegar last. Let all stand together ten minutes before adding the shrimps. When this is done, stir well for a minute and a half and serve in a glass dish, garnished with lemon, or (if you can get one) in a clean crab-shell.
Or, ✠
- ½ lb. old cheese, grated.
- 1 hard-boiled egg.
- ½ teaspoonful cayenne.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
- 1 teaspoonful white sugar.
- 1 teaspoonful made mustard.
- 1 tablespoonful onion vinegar.
- 1 tablespoonful salad oil.
Rub the yolk of the egg to a paste with the oil, adding in order the salt, pepper, sugar, and mustard, lastly the cheese. Work all well together before putting in the vinegar. Serve in a crab-shell.
These mixtures bear a marvellous resemblance in taste to devilled crab, and make a good impromptu relish at tea or luncheon. Eat with crackers and butter. This is still better if you add a cupful of cold minced chicken.
Use none but the best and freshest olive salad oil (not sweet oil, falsely so called) in compounding your salad-dressing. If you cannot obtain this, melted butter is the best substitute I know of.
VEGETABLES.
Rules Applicable to the Cooking of all Vegetables.
1. Have them as fresh as possible. Stale and withered ones are unwholesome and unpalatable. Summer vegetables should be cooked on the same day they are gathered, if possible.
2. Pick over and wash well, cutting out all decayed or unripe parts.
3. Lay them, when peeled, in cold water for some time before cooking.
4. If you boil them, put a little salt in the water.
5. Cook them steadily after you put them on.
6. Be sure they are thoroughly done. Rare vegetables are neither good nor fashionable.
7. Drain well.
8. Serve hot!