The mixing of salad is an art which it is easy to attain with care. The main point is to incorporate the several articles required for the salad, and to serve up at table as fresh as possible. The herbs should be "morning gathered," and they will be much refreshed by laying an hour or two in spring water. Careful picking, and washing, and drying in a cloth, in the kitchen, are also very important, and the due proportion of each herb requires attention.
The sauce may be thus prepared:—Boil two eggs for ten or twelve minutes, and then put them in cold water for a few minutes, so that the yolks may become quite cold and hard. Rub them through a coarse sieve with a wooden spoon, and mix them with a tablespoonful of water or cream, and then add two tablespoonfuls of fine flask oil, or melted butter; mix, and add by degrees a teaspoonful of salt, and the same quantity of mustard: mix till smooth, and then incorporate with the other ingredients about three tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
Pour this sauce down the side of the salad bowl, but do not stir up the salad till wanted to be eaten. Garnish the top of the salad with the white of the eggs, cut in slices; or these may be arranged in such manner as to be ornamental on the table. Some persons may fancy they are able to prepare a salad without previous instruction, but, like everything else, a little knowledge in this case is not thrown away.
1267. French Mode of Dressing Salad
Fill the salad bowl with lettuce and small salading, taking care not to cut up the lettuce into too small strips. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and, if liked, drop some mustard, mixed thin, over the salad, and strew a little moist sugar over it. Then pour over the whole three tablespoonfuls of good salad oil and one of Orléans vinegar, and turn over the lettuce lightly with a salad spoon and fork, that every portion of it may be brought into contact with the mixture. This mode of preparing a salad is far more expeditious than the ordinary way.
1268. Salad Mixture in Verse
Two large potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Unwonted softness to the salad give;
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon—
Distrust the condiment which bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt;
Three times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And once with vinegar procured from town.
True flavour needs it, and your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two well-boiled eggs;
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, scarce suspected, animate the whole;
And lastly, on the favoured compound toss
A magic teaspoon of anchovy sauce;
Then, though green turtle fail, though venison's tough,
And ham and turkey be not boiled enough
Serenely full, the epicure may say,—
"Fate cannot harm me—I have dined today."