Even though it is not desired to use the salad to carry out a color scheme, it should always be made an attractive dish. As is well known, nothing is so unappetizing as a salad in which the ingredients have not been properly prepared, the garnish is not fresh and crisp, or the dressing and salad ingredients have been combined in such a way as to appear messy or stale looking. There is no excuse for such conditions, and they need not exist if proper attention is given to the preparation of the salad.
4. SELECTION OF SALADS.--Although salads, through their variety, offer the housewife an opportunity to vary her meals, they require a little attention as to their selection if a properly balanced meal is to be the result. Salads that are high in food value or contain ingredients similar to those found in the other dishes served in the meal, should be avoided with dinners or with other heavy meals. For instance, a fish or a meat salad should not be served with a dinner, for it would supply a quantity of protein to a meal that is already sufficiently high in this food substance because of the fact that meat also is included. Such a salad, however, has a place in a very light luncheon or a supper, for it helps to balance such a meal. The correct salad to serve with a dinner that contains a number of heavy dishes is a vegetable salad, if enough vegetables are not already included, or a fruit salad, if the dessert does not consist of fruit. In case a fruit salad is selected, it is often made to serve for both the salad and the dessert course.
5. SALAD ACCOMPANIMENTS.--In addition to the ingredients used in the preparation of salads, dressings usually form an important part. These vary greatly as to ingredients and consequently as to composition, but most of them contain considerable fat and therefore increase the food value of the salad. Then, too, an accompaniment of some kind is generally served with salads to make them more attractive and more pleasing to the taste. This may be a wafer or a cracker of some description or a small sandwich made of bread cut into thin slices and merely buttered or buttered and then spread with a filling of some sort. Such accompaniments, of course, are not a necessity, but they add enough to the salad to warrant their use.
COMPOSITION OF SALADS
6. The composition, as well as the total food value, of salads depends entirely on the ingredients of which they are composed. With an understanding of the composition of the ingredients used in salads, the housewife will be able to judge fairly accurately whether the salad is low, medium, or high in food value, and whether it is high in protein, fat, or carbohydrate. This matter is important, and should receive consideration from all who prepare this class of food.
7. PROTEIN IN SALADS.--As may be expected, salads that are high in protein have for their basis, or contain, such ingredients as meat, fish, fowl, cheese, eggs, nuts, or dried beans. The amount of protein that such a salad contains naturally varies with the quantity of high-protein food that is used. For instance, a salad that has hard-cooked eggs for its foundation contains considerable protein, but one in which a slice or two of hard-cooked egg is used for a garnish cannot be said to be a high-protein salad.
8. FAT IN SALADS.--The fat in salads is more often included as a part of the dressing than in any other way, but the quantity introduced may be very large. A French dressing or a mayonnaise dressing, as a rule, contains a sufficient proportion of some kind of oil to make the salad in which it is used somewhat high in fat. In fact, salads are often used as a means of introducing fat into a meal, and whenever this is done they should be considered as one of the dishes that supply energy-producing food material to the meals in which they are served.
9. CARBOHYDRATE IN SALADS.--For the most part, salads do not contain carbohydrate in any quantity. If fruits are used, the salad will, of course, contain a certain amount of sugar. Salads in which potatoes, peas, beets, and other vegetables are used also contain starch or sugar in varying quantities. However, with the exception of potato salad, salads are probably never taken as a source of carbohydrate.
10. MINERAL SALTS IN SALADS.--In the majority of salads, mineral salts are an important ingredient. Meat and fish salads are the only ones in which the mineral salts are not especially desirable, but they can be improved in this respect if a certain amount of vegetables are mixed with them. Green-vegetable salads are the most valuable sources of mineral salts, and fruit salads come next. In addition, these two varieties of salads contain vitamines, which are substances necessary to maintain health. Cheese and egg salads, which are high-protein salads, are also valuable for the vitamines they supply.
11. CELLULOSE IN SALADS.--Vegetable and fruit salads serve to supply cellulose in the diet. Unless the meals contain sufficient cellulose in some other form, the use of such salads is an excellent way in which to introduce this material. Of course, the salads composed of foods high in cellulose are lower in food value than others, but the salad dressing usually helps to make up for this deficiency.