I Go A-Marketing

by Henrietta Sowle

Now, don’t skip what is going down here about a sardine salad—you will miss it if you do. I know you will say you wouldn’t fancy the oil in which they are preserved in a salad, and I can see that rather superior curl your lip takes on as you say it. But soak them for an hour in vinegar, then remove the skin from them and arrange in a circle on your salad dish. In the centre heap pitted and quartered olives. Make a dressing of the strained juice of a lemon mixed with a tablespoonful of olive oil, a bit of salt and of paprika, and over all a sprinkling of capers. Then, take a taste of it when your turn comes, and be sorry you were inclined to pass by it.

Brussels Sprouts Salad

Now and then, you know, we do have a few Brussels sprouts left over from the day before’s dinner, and at the price usually asked we couldn’t throw them away, and yet there weren’t enough to pay for reheating. So, in order to be forehanded, and also to have the “makings” of a delicious salad in the house, get double the quantity you usually have the next time you are getting them, and be glad for every one that is left over, for the next day you will sprinkle a few drops of lemon juice over them, coat them with a mayonnaise, sprinkle with capers and sliced olives, and serve very cold. At a simple little dinner, where you are having “left-overs” daintily fixed up, this salad works in beautifully, or if you are giving a dinner that is as elaborate as anything you ever turn out, count on this salad to be one of the features of your dinner.

Oyster Salad

A delicious offering to put before your household some night is a salad of oysters. Have a quart of them, say, drain and wipe them well from their own liquor. Boil a cup of vinegar, and season it while boiling with salt and white pepper. Pour it over the oysters, and let them stand for two hours or so. Then drain them pretty dry, and lay on a bed of chopped celery in the salad bowl. If the oysters are very large cut in halves or quarters. Have a layer of chopped celery on top of the oysters, and coat thickly with mayonnaise. Be sure, however, that the oysters are perfectly cold before adding to the celery. Garnish with a few oyster crabs, pickled at the same time the oysters were pickled, and some sliced olives. To be very, very extravagant in making this salad, if you so want to be for the purpose of impressing some one, add to it a few sliced truffles that have been soaked in white wine for an hour or two.

Nut Salad

For some occasions, at this season of the year, a nut salad just fills the bill as nothing else can. Choose almost any kind of nuts, but preferably let them be mainly English walnuts. Have them in halves, or in quarters, and squeeze lemon juice over them fifteen minutes before dressing. Then add to them half their quantity of quartered olives, some very tender little celery leaves, and a thin mask of mayonnaise. Really, when you have turned out this salad, for a party supper, say, you need give yourselves very little uneasiness as to how the other viands will set with your guests. Such a salad is calculated to redeem a good many faults in other directions.

Fruit Salad

Just a word about a sweet salad, and this screed is ended. Oranges. It shall be of oranges—big, luscious, juicy, seedless oranges, that are at their height for the next two months or more. These you slice, after peeling, as you would an apple. Put a layer of them in a bowl, sprinkle with powdered sugar and a few drops of orange curaçoa. Then another layer of oranges, another of sugar, another fall of curaçoa, and so on till the dish is full. Then, if there are half a dozen oranges used, pour over them about half a gill of brandy, either the plain brandy or apricot brandy. The latter, I find, is possessed of a mysterious flavor that, when added to an orange salad, just sets people to wondering why it is they have to go away from home to find such delights.