SALADS AND SALAD DRESSING.
"To make a perfect salad, there should be a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a wise man for salt, and a madcap to stir the ingredients up, and mix them well together." — SPANISH PROVERB
It is said that "Any fool can make a salad," but all salads are not made by fools. "Mixing" comes by intuition, and the successful cooks use the ingredients, judgment, and their own tastes, rather than the recipe.
Any number of salads and fillings for sandwiches for home use, teas or receptions, can be made at little cost and trouble, by using the following simple recipe for dressing. The secret of success of the dressing lies in the mixing of the ingredients:
Powder the cold yolks of four hard boiled eggs; then stir in one tablespoon even full of common mustard, one-half teaspoonful of salt, and two heaping tablespoonfuls of pulverized sugar. When mixed thoroughly, add three tablespoonfuls of good table oil, and stir rapidly for three minutes; then add six tablespoonfuls of good, sharp vinegar, and stir for five minutes. Now you will have dressing sufficient for a dozen or fifteen plates of salad, and one that will keep in a cool place for weeks.
LETTUCE SALAD.
Add to the above dressing just before serving, one pound of crisp lettuce, cut in one-half inch squares, or sliced fine. Garnish the dish or dishes with the white of the egg, chopped fine, to which add the thin slices of two or three small radishes.
LOBSTER SALAD.
Take one pound of fresh or canned lobster, two small onions, one fourth of a lemon (with rind), two bunches of celery, or a like amount of crisp cabbage; chop fine, and thoroughly mix with the dressing. Serve on a lettuce leaf in individual dishes; garnish with the white of the eggs, chopped fine.
Veal, chicken, terrapin, salmon, little-neck clams, scollops, etc., can be utilized by the judicious cook in connection with the dressing.