Lay a stratum on the dish, and anoint the stratum with Tartare sauce. Each layer must be similarly anointed, and must be of less circumference than the one underneath, till the top layer consists of one caper. Garnish with bombs of caviare, sliced lemon, crayfish, olives, and salted cucumber; and then give the salad to the policeman on fixed-point duty. At least, if you take my advice.
Anchovy Salad.
This is usually eaten at the commencement of dinner, as a hors d’œuvre.
Some shreds of anchovy should be arranged “criss-cross” in a flat glass dish. Surround it with small heaps of chopped truffles, yolk and white of hard-boiled eggs, capers, and a stoned olive or two. Mix all the ingredients together with a little Chili vinegar, and twice the quantity of oil.
The mixture is said to be invaluable as an appetiser; but the modest oyster on the deep shell—if he has not been fattened at the bolt-hole of the main sewer—is to be preferred.
Cooked vegetables, for salad purposes, are not, nor will they ever be, popular in England, Nine out of ten Britains will eat the “one sauce” with asparagus, in preference to the oiled butter, or plain salad dressing, of mustard, vinegar, pepper, salt, and oil; whilst ’tis almost hopeless to attempt to dissuade madame the cook from smothering her cauliflowers with liquefied paste, before sending them to table. Many a wild weed which foreign nations snatch greedily from the soil, prior to dressing it, is passed by with scorn by our islanders, including the dandelion, which is a favourite of our lively neighbours, for salad purposes, and is doubtless highly beneficial to the human liver. So is the cauliflower; and an eminent medical authority once gave out that the man who ate a parboiled cauliflower, as a salad, every other day, need never send for a doctor. Which sounds rather like fouling his own nest.
Fruit Salad.
This is simply a French compôte of cherries, green almonds, pears, limes, peaches, apricots in syrup slightly flavoured with ginger; and goes excellent well with any cold brown game. Try it.