“Epicurean cooks
Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite.”
Roman salad—Italian ditto—Various other salads—Sauce for cold mutton—Chutnine—Raw chutnee—Horse-radish sauce—Christopher North’s sauce—How to serve a mackerel—Sauce Tartare—Ditto for sucking pig—Delights of making Sambal—A new language.
It has, I hope, been made sufficiently clear that neither water-cress nor radishes should figure in a dressed salad; from the which I would also exclude such “small deer” as mustard and cress. There is, however, no black mark against the narrow-leaved Corn Salad plant, or “lamb’s lettuce”; and its great advantage is that it can be grown almost anywhere during the winter months, when lettuces have to be “coddled,” and thereby robbed of most of their flavour.
Instead of yolk of egg, in a dressing, cheese may be used, with good results, either cream cheese—not the poor stuff made on straws, but what are known as “napkin,” or “New Forest” cheeses—or Cheddar. Squash it well up with oil and vinegar, and do not use too much. A piece of cheese the size of an average lump of sugar will be ample, and will lend a most agreeable flavour to the mixture.
Roman Salad
Lucullus and Co.—or rather their cooks—had much to learn in the preparation of the “herbaceous meat” which delighted Sydney Smith. The Romans cultivated endive; this was washed free from “matter in the wrong place,” chopped small—absolutely fatal to the taste—anointed with oil and liquamen, topped up with chopped onions, and further ornamented with honey and vinegar. But before finding fault with the conquerors of the world for mixing honey with a salad, it should be remembered that they knew not “fine Demerara,” nor “best lump,” nor even the beet sugar which can be made at home. Still I should not set a Roman salad before my creditors, if I wanted them to have “patience.” An offer of the very smallest dividend would be preferable.
Italian Salad.
The merry Italian has improved considerably upon the herbaceous treat (I rather prefer “treat” to “meat”) of his ancestors; though he is far too fond of mixing flesh-meat of all sorts with his dressed herbs, and his boiled vegetables. Two cold potatoes and half a medium sized beet sliced, mixed with boiled celery and Brussels sprouts, form a common salad in the sunny South; the dressing being usually oil and vinegar, occasionally oil seule, and sometimes a Tartare sauce. Stoned olives are usually placed atop of the mess, which includes fragments of chicken, or veal and ham.
Russian Salad.
This is a difficult task to build up; for a sort of Cleopatra’s Needle, or pyramid, of cooked vegetables, herbs, pickles, etc., has to be erected on a flat dish. Carrots, turnips, green peas, asparagus, French beans, beetroot, capers, pickled cucumbers, and horse-radish, form the solid matter of which the pyramid is built.