The "Queen" cookery books: Vegetables

Salad Nauloise. — Wipe, cleanse, and slice some raw mushrooms, mixing them with sliced truffles, cold cooked (waxy) potatoes, and cos lettuce. Serve with a French or mayonnaise garnish. Hongroise. — Scald, peel, and slice rather thickly, some ripe and well-coloured tomatoes, dust them plentifully with freshly-ground black pepper, salt, a dust of cayenne, and some very finely-minced shallot or chives ; now sprinkle these slices with oil and tarragon vinegar, and set them on ice till wanted. Serve garnished with whipped or clotted cream, into which you have stirred some coralline pepper and finely-minced chives or parsley. See that this is icy cold when served. For a French salad dressing, put into a basin a good pinch of freshly-ground black pepper, half a tea spoonful of salt, and a scant tablespoonful of tarragon (or plain) vinegar, and stir this well together till the salt is perfectly dissolved ; now work into the mixture three full tablespuonfuls of good salad oil (Provence oil is generally the sweetest) ; lay in your salad, and toss it well over and over in this dressing till each leaf, &c., has imbilied its proper share, then lift them out with the salad servers into the salad bowl, and serve. Never mix salad in the salad bowl unless you have personally wiped every leaf, &c., or you will find a sloppy residuum at the bottom of the bowl that will quite spoil the flavour. Do not forget either that salad should only be mixed just as it is wanted. For mayonnaise, put into a basin one raw egg yolk, an eggspoonful of mustard (either French or English, or lialf of each), and a pinch each of salt and white pepper ; mix this all with a delicately clean wooden spoon (a special spoon should always be kept for salad-mixing), adding, drop by drop, enough good oil to bring it all to the consistency of butter, and, lastly, add a teaspoonful or so of best vinegar, plain or flavoured. This will make about half a pint of sauce, and will take up about one-third of a pint of oil. There are, of course, many different forms of mayonnaise, but these have been given with the fancy salads to which they belong. Never, if possible, let a mayonnaise salad stand after it is mixed, or the vegetables will get soppy and sodden ; whilst exposure to the air will give the dressing a most unpleasant, rank flavour. Salsify {Salsifi}. — This vegetable appears to be returning to favour again, after being almost forgotten for many years, and it is certainly well worth cultivating and preparing. There are two kinds, the white salsify and the black or scorzanera ; the former is eaten in its first year’s growth, but the latter is not ready under two years. Scorzanera should never be scraped or peeled till it is cooked, as if cut or scratched when raw all its flavour and juice exudes. h) boil. — For lib. of the vegetal)]e put into a pan rather more than a pint of water, half a teaspoonful of salt, a dessertspoonful of vinegar or lemon juice, and about 2oz. of butter or well clarified dripping, stir this till it boils, then lay in the salsify, neatly trimmed and cut into three inch lengths.