The Pleasures of the Table / An Account of Gastronomy from Ancient Days to Present Times. With a History of Its Literature, Schools, and Most Distinguished Artists; Together With Some Special Recipes, and Views Concerning the Aesthetics of Dinners and Dinner-giving

by George H. Ellwanger

THE WOUNDED SNIPE

From an engraving after A. Couquet, R.A.

SALLETS AND SALADS

"First then to speak of Sallets, there be some simple, some compounded, some only to furnish out the table, and some both for use and adornation."—Gervaise Markham: The English Housewife.

To remember a successful salad is generally to remember a successful dinner; at all events, the perfect dinner necessarily includes the perfect salad. The mere process of salad-making is among the most simple of all those that appertain to the table: a little oil, a little vinegar, of salt and pepper each a little, the onion and the mixing, with such other herbs and condiments as the artist may elect. And yet an unexceptionable salad is as rare in the average household as a piece of old Gubbio, or a fine old Ghiordes prayer-rug. Seldom, indeed, is this refreshing dish met with as one usually finds it in France—crisp, tender, and appetising, with none of its ingredients perceptibly dominant in the liaison which, first pleasingly addressing the taste, is afterwards destined to soothe and tranquillise digestion. The reason is not difficult to analyse; the happy touch which is necessary in salads and sauces being largely a matter of individual address and a growth of advanced gastronomy. For in the preparing of salads no formula that is absolute may be given, success depending upon practice, a correct taste, and minute attention to detail. Here, as in everything else that is faultless, care and experience are factors requisite to attainment. But though an infallible recipe may not be laid down, certain broad lines may be specified, the observance of which, with application, will render a good salad possible even to the neophyte.

At every season of the year some of the innumerable products of the vegetable world present themselves to be converted with the aid of the caster from the crude into the finished form; and more is the pity that the artists are not as numerous as the esculents. From the first tributes of the hot-bed—the lettuces, radishes, and garden-cress of early spring, and the cos, lettuces, and water-cresses of summer to the endives of autumn and corn-salad and chicory of winter, one has an abundance of material to choose from in what may be broadly designated the lettuce tribe, alone. When to these are added other esculents like celery, the tomato, cucumber, potato, beets, carrots, beans, celery-root, celery-turnip, etc., together with the manifold herbs and bulbous plants that may be utilised in connection with them, surely the roast should never be lacking in this its most harmonious appoggiatura, or the supper-table fail in one of its greatest attractions.

The salad imparts a zest to the dinner that were otherwise unattainable. What were those most delectable of game-birds that reward the sportsman's skill—the snipe and the partridge—without it? It was rightly held by Evelyn that sallets are an essential part of the daily food of man, and that no dinner is complete without one; although those who are not confirmed devotees of the salad-bowl might possibly prove sceptical as to two forms which he specifies in "Sylva,"—"I am told that those small young Acorns which we find in the Stock-doves Craws are a delicious fare, as well as those incomparable Salads of young herbs taken out of the maws of Partridge at a certain season of the year, which gives them a preparation far exceeding all the art of Cookery."

Of the virtues of lettuce, at any rate, there can be no doubt, Parkinson having declared that "Lettices all cool a hot and fainting stomache," and Gerarde averring that "Lettuce cooleth the heate of the stomache, called the heart-burning, and helpeth it when it is troubled with choller." And if these assertions be not sufficient, we have Savarin's assurance that "salad refreshes without weakening, and comforts without irritating"; not to mention the dictum of his illustrious predecessor La Reynière, that "the inseparable partner of the roast may reappear at each meal without ever wearying." In 1758 a German work by J. F. Schutze was published in Leipzig with the title, "Treatise on the Advantages and Disadvantages of Salads." It is difficult to imagine how a German could find aught but delight in this form of food, unless the native black radish was alluded to, or possibly the cucumber when improperly served. Rather let us at once accept the unqualified encomium of Jack Cade while in Iden's Kentish garden,—"I think this word 'sallet' was born to do me good." By the majority, the name of Sydney Smith is held to be almost synonymous with that of salad; and even though his recipe be widely familiar, it may not be overlooked in considering the literature of gastronomy: