Host and Guest

by A. V. Kirwan

In 1664, if my memory serves me rightly, John Evelyn wrote a treatise “On Salets,” in a small volume, which I possess in my library; but I cannot, at this moment, lay my hand on the little book. Though curious in a certain sense, the treatise would be found more useful for the horticulturist than for the cook. Salads are now, as in Evelyn’s day, composed of certain pot-herbs, to which are added various aromatical odoriferous herbs, or fournitures (that is the term of art in French cookery), which greatly add to the zest of the mixture. There are about twelve of these herbes de fourniture, as they are called, namely, garden-cress, water-cress, chervil, chives, scallions or green onions, tarragon, pimpernel or burnet, parsley pert, hartshorn, sweet basil, purslain, fennel, and young balsam. Cresses are wholesome and anti-scorbutic, chervil is a purifier, chives a stimulant, tarragon stomachic and corroborant, while parsley is carminative, and the remaining herbs are all pronounced by Lémery in his “Traité des Aliments,” to have medicinal virtues. Salads, of course, vary according to the season. Chicorée or endive, is in season at the end of autumn, and it is not usual to add any herbe de fourniture to that salad. Some, in France, place at the bottom of the salad-basin containing an endive salad, a small crust of stale bread rubbed over with garlic, which gives a slight flavour to the dish. Later in the season, another species of chicorée, called scarole, is had recourse to. It is not so tender as chicory or succory, but has as much flavour, and is quite as wholesome. Chicory or succory is, according to Lémery, of a moistening and cooling nature, and creates an appetite. Winter salads are generally composed of mâche or corn salad, rampions (which, according to Lémery, “fortify the stomach, help digestion, are detersive, and agree with every age and constitution”), and chopped celery. Sometimes, also, in winter, a salad is made exclusively of chopped celery, seasoned with oil and mustard.

Garden or water-cress is also a winter salad. It is good to mix it with slices of beetroot; and in France, more especially in Provence, olives are often added. Towards February, the salad most in vogue is an endive called barbe de Capucin, or Capucin’s beard. It is seasoned like the white succory.

The lettuce, known in England for more than three centuries, generally appears about the commencement of Lent, but the better sort of lettuce does not make its appearance before Easter. It is the most popular of all salads, and possesses soothing properties. Herbes de fourniture are added to it, with which anchovies and chopped chives are mixed. Sometimes, to vary the dish, prawns and shrimps are likewise thrown in.

Next comes the Roman lettuce, less watery, and with much fuller and finer flavour than the preceding, especially when the leaves are streaked. The Roman lettuce is sometimes served with odoriferous herbs, but hard eggs are rarely added to the seasoning. Roman lettuce is in season from May to the end of Autumn.

Besides these, there are hotch-potch salads, made en Macedoine, with a variety of roots and vegetables, such as French beans, haricots blancs, lentils, small onions, beetroot, saxifrage, or goat’s beard (called in French, salsifis), potatoes, carrots, artichoke-bottoms, asparagus-tops, gherkins, sliced anchovies, soused tunny, olives, truffles, &c.

There are salads also of meat, fish, and game. A salade à l’italienne is composed of cold fowl cut up in pieces, and served with anchovies and dressed salad. Sometimes this salad is made with a cold partridge; and very relishing it is.

I insert here Carème’s receipt for a salade de poulets à la Reine. It will be seen that, like all his receipts, it would be somewhat costly:—“Dress in a poële, or roast four fine chickens, and when cold cut them in pieces, as for a fricassée; lay the pieces in a basin, with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, whole parsley washed, a small onion sliced, or a shalot, and cover with a round piece of paper; leave them in this seasoning for some hours; boil eight eggs of the same size hard, and take off the shells; wash six fine lettuces; half an hour before serving, drain the fowl upon a napkin, separating the small pieces of parsley and onions, take the leaves from the lettuces, preserving the hearts very small, cut the leaves small, season them as a salad usually is, and turn them into the dish; lay upon them in a circle the eight thighs of the fowls, in the centre put the wings, upon the top of the thighs lay the rumps and two of the breasts only, surmount these with the fillets, laying one the smooth side upwards, and the next the contrary way, or upside down (as four are taken from the left, and four from the right side), on these lay the two other breasts; be careful to keep this entrée very neat and very upright; make a border of eggs cut in eight pieces, and between each quarter place upright small hearts of lettuces, each heart cut in four or even six pieces; place half an egg, in which fix upright a heart of lettuce, and place it on the summit of the salad; then mix in a basin a good pinch of chervil and some tarragon leaves, both being chopped and blanched, with salt, pepper, oil, ravigote vinegar, and a spoonful of aspic jelly, chopped small; the whole well mingled, pour it over the salad and serve immediately.”

The vinegar used in salads should always be wine vinegar, not pyroligneous acid.

Chaptal, the great chymist, and afterwards Minister of the Interior, in France, has given a receipt for dressing salad. He directs that the salad should be saturated with oil, and seasoned with salt and pepper, before the vinegar is added. It results from this process that there never can be too much vinegar, for, from the specific gravity of the vinegar compared with oil, what is more than needful will fall to the bottom of the salad bowl. The salt should not be dissolved in the vinegar, but in the oil, by which means it is more equally distributed through the salad.