Rose among roots, the maiden fair,
Wine-scented and poetic soul
of every salad. You may rub with it the bowl, you may chop it up fine and sprinkle with it the lettuce, as you might sprinkle an omelet with herbs. But there, in one form or another, it must be. The French have a tendency to abuse it; they will cut it in great slices to spread between layers of tomatoes or cucumbers. But there is a touch of grossness in this device. It is just the soupçon you crave, just the subtle flavour it alone can impart. You do not want your salad, when it comes on the table, to suggest nothing so much as the stewed steak and onions shops in the Strand! The fates forbid.
"What diversities soever there be in herbs, all are shuffled up together under the name of sallade." And Montaigne wrote in sadness, knowing well that there could be no error more fatal. Have you ever asked for a salad at the greengrocer's, and been offered a collection of weeds befitting nothing so much as Betsy Prig's capacious pocket? Have you ever, at the table of the indifferent, been served with the same collection plentifully drenched with "salad cream"? But these are painful memories, speedily to be put aside and banished for evermore. Some combinations there are of herbs or greens or vegetables unspeakably delicious, even in the thought thereof. But it is not at haphazard, by an unsympathetic greengrocer, they can be made; not in haste, from bottles of atrocities, they can be dressed. They are the result of conscientious study, of consummate art.
Besides, some varieties there be of flavour too delicate to be tampered with: for instance, the cabbage lettuce, as the vulgar call it, which comes in about Easter time, but which, at the cost of a little trouble, can be had all the year round. For some reason unknown, your hard-hearted greengrocer, half the time, objects to it seriously, declares it not to be found from end to end of Covent Garden. But let him understand that upon his providing it depends your custom, and he fetches it—the unprincipled one—fast enough. The ragged outer leaves pulled away, crisp and fresh is the heart, a cool green and white harmony not to be touched by brutal knife. The leaves must be torn apart, gently and lovingly, as the painter plays with the colours on his palette. Then, thrown into the bowl which already has been well rubbed with onion, and slices of hard-boiled egg laid upon the top for adornment and flavouring alike, at once may the dressing of oil and vinegar and salt and pepper be poured on, and the process of "fatiguing" begin. You need add nothing more, to know, as you eat, that life, so long as salads are left to us, is well worth the living.
To say this is to differ in a measure from the great Alexandre, a misfortune surely to be avoided. To this lettuce he would add herbs of every kind; nay, even oysters, or tortoise eggs, or anchovies, or olives—in fact, the subject is one which has sent his ever delightful imagination to work most riotously. But, in all humility, must it still be urged that the cabbage lettuce is best ungarnished, save, it may be, by a touch of the unrivalled celery or slices of the adorable tomato—never, if yours be the heart of an artist, by the smallest fragment of the coarse, crude, stupid beetroot.
The romaine, or cos, however, is none the worse for Dumas' suggestions; indeed, it is much the better. Its long stiff leaves, as they are, may not be "fatigued" with anything approaching ease or success. It is to be said—with hesitation perhaps, and yet to be said—that they make the better salad for being cut before they are put into the bowl. As if to atone for this unavoidable liberty, dainty additions may not come amiss: the tender little boneless anchovies, fish of almost any and every kind—most admirably, salmon and a bit of red herring in conjunction—cucumbers, celery, tomatoes, radishes—all will blend well and harmoniously. Be bold in your experiments, and fear nothing. Many failures are a paltry price to pay for one perfect dish.
Of other green salads the name is legion: endive, dandelion leaves, chicory, chervil, mustard and cress, and a hundred and more besides before the resources of France—more especially the Midi—and Italy be exhausted. And none may be eaten becomingly without the oil and vinegar dressing; all are the pleasanter for the soupçon of onion, and the egg, hard-boiled; a few gain by more variegated garniture.
But these minor salads—as they might be classed—pale before the glories of the tomato: the pomodoro of the Italian, the pomme d'amour of the Provençal—sweet, musical names, that linger tenderly on the lips. And, indeed, if the tomato were veritably the "love apple" of the Scriptures, and, in Adam's proprietorship, the olives already yielded oil, the vines vinegar, then the tragedy in the Garden of Eden may be explained without the aid of commentary. Many a man—Esau notably—has sold his birthright for less than a good tomato salad.
Dante's Inferno were too good for the depraved who prepare it, as if it were a paltry pickle, with a dosing of vinegar. It must first receive the stimulus of the onion; then its dressing must be fortified by the least suspicion of mustard—English, French, or German, it matters not which—and if the pleasure that follows does not reconcile you to Paradise lost, as well might you live on dry bread and cold water for the rest of your natural days. The joys of the epicure, clearly, are not for you. It seems base and sordid to offer for so exquisite a delicacy hygienic references. But the world is still full of misguided men who prize "dietetic principles" above the delights of gluttony; once assured that from the eating of the tomato will come none of the evils "to which flesh is erroneously supposed to be heir," they might be induced to put tomato salad, made in right fashion, to the test. Then must they be confirmed faddists indeed, if they do not learn that one eats not merely to digest.