Y a pas danger qu’on soit jamais malade
Quand on mange avec de la salade
Un bon morçeau de jambon.
Amis, cassons les pots, les plats, les verres,
Cassons les verres, les plats, les pots;
Puisqu’il n’y a plus dans l’plat qu’des pommes de terre,
Cassons les verres, les pots, les plats!
“When summer is icumen in,” one naturally turns to the cooling salad, the refreshing salmon mayonnaise, and the concomitant delights of mid-season entertaining. Regularly at that time of the year learned pundits in the daily papers tell us with portentous gravity what we ought to eat and what we ought to let alone. All this is the direst nonsense. A man or a woman of sense will eat that for which he or she feels inclined, and will have the requisite gastronomic gumption to avoid heating dishes which are unseasonable and unpalatable.
With all changes of the weather sensible people accommodate their diet to the meteorological conditions; fish is preferable to meat, and fruit plays its strong suit, because its cooling juices are just what we yearn to dally with when our appetites are a little under the weather. All this is axiomatic. Of salads in particular. I should like to give here and now the recipe of a salad which I have found most soothing and comforting in hot weather. I may, perhaps, be permitted to act as godfather and christen it “Vanity Fair Salad.” It is quite simple and wholesome and toothsome. Here followeth the recipe.
Vanity Fair Salad.—Take eight to ten cold cooked artichoke bottoms (fonds d’artichauts), fresh, not preserved, and the yellow hearts of two young healthy lettuces (cœurs de laitue). Break them into pieces with a silver fork or your fingers (on no account let them be touched by steel); add a not too thinly sliced cucumber, peeled; toss these together. Let them stand for half an hour; then drain off all the water. Now add two or three tablespoonfuls of pickled red cabbage, minus all vinegar, and a dozen sliced-up radishes. Add the dressing. As to this I prefer not to dogmatize. My own mixture is three and a half tablespoonfuls of the very best Nice olive oil to one of wine vinegar and one-half of tarragon, with salt, pepper, French mustard, and three drops of Tabasco sauce. But this is a matter of opinion, and I insist on nothing except the total avoidance of that horrible furniture-polish mixture sold in quaint convoluted bottles, and humorously dubbed “salad sauce.” Just before serving sprinkle the salad with chopped chervil and a suspicion of chives.