Another chance to coin good money, messieurs gardeners! Americans must have the best, and if you don't supply it, a rival will.
The American lobster and shrimp salads cannot be beaten; but we have much to learn of the French and other Europeans as to the endless varieties of green, vegetable, fish and meat salads by way of multiplying the pleasures of the table, and banishing intestinal dyspepsia, for which salads are more remedial than Fletcherizing.
When once the importance of this subject is fully understood, salads will become the principal lunch dishes in American homes and restaurants, especially during the hot months when to be "three miles from a lemon"—or something else that is refreshingly sour—is a hygienic tragedy.
"Fruit salads," when not sour, make desirable desserts. When not sour, such combinations should not be called salads. As a rule sour fruit mixtures seem incongruous to a trained palate.
In these days of Debussyan influences one must be prepared for all sorts of anarchistic combinations of flavors. Personally, I draw the line at the compound of Roquefort cheese and sour salad now placed unblushingly on some American tables. The mixture of these two delicacies is awful. One can easily see how the illegitimate union was suggested by the illogical custom of serving cheese with salad, dressed or undressed—the usual English way.
VEGETABLES AS A SEPARATE COURSE.
The mess just referred to, which would make a Parisian gourmet shudder, is only one illustration of the Anglo-American mistaken policy of serving together foods that are preferable separately. On this point, too, France has an important lesson to teach us, particularly in the serving of vegetables.
The making of a menu requires as much taste and judgment as the arranging of a concert program. Next to variety, contrast is the most important thing to be considered. A vegetable served separately provides some of this needful contrast.
An English epicure declares that the secret of the excellence in French cookery lies in the lavish use of vegetables. "Where we use one kind, French cooks use twenty."