1. Salade blanche.
  2. Salade verte.
  3. Salade de citron.
  4. Salade d’entremets.
  5. Salade de grenade.
  6. Salade de Houblon.
  7. Salade de laitues.
  8. Salade d’olives.
  9. Salade de perce-pierre.
  10. Salade de poires de bon crétien.
  11. Salade de pourpier confit.

We know better in our day than to make a salad of asparagus. Dr. Roques thus speaks of asparagus in his “Observations sur les Plantes usuelles”:—“The asparagus grows naturally in the woods, in the hedges, in the sea-sand, and on the banks of rivers. The ancients knew and cultivated asparagus. Athenæus speaks of field and mountain asparagus; he says the best are those which grow naturally, without being sown. Martial, Pliny, and Juvenal also speak of asparagus. The Romans especially esteemed those of Ravenna. Nature, says Pliny, wished that asparagus should grow wild so that they might be gathered every where by everyone; but being improved by cultivation, the blades astonish by their thickness. They are sold at Ravenna at three to the pound.”

In Covent Garden Market, in the season, it is very common to find asparagus so fat that six weigh a pound.

Why is Dr. Roques so silent as to the velocity with which this vegetable may be cooked? Quicker than asparagus is boiled, became a proverb among the Romans.[22] Juvenal mentions a large lobster surrounded with asparagus, and promises, in the eleventh satire to his friend Perseus, a plate of mountain asparagus, which had been freshly gathered by his farmer’s wife.

“Montani

Asparagi, posito quos legit villica fuso.”

I remember having read somewhere of a gentleman travelling near the town of Arras (where Robespierre was born), and meeting a countryman who insisted on supping with him. Entering an inn, the gentleman asked for an omelette and some asparagus. After having helped the rustic to his half-share of the omelette, the stupid lout asked what were the asparagus. “Oh!” replied the host, “they are a very fine vegetable, and you shall have half of the bunch, as you have had half of the omelette.” Thereupon the intelligent gourmand transferred to his neighbour’s plate the ends, or as the late Mr. Justice Creswell quaintly, yet forcibly used to say it, the handle of the esculent, who thought these quisquiliæ tougher to chew than the stalky part of the cabbage.

The Marquis de Cussy tells us that no less a personage than Napoleon ate the haricots de soissons, or kidney-beans with oil, as a salad.