Practical home cookery

I have tasted mock-turtle soup which might have been called marjoram soup. Herbs and spices must always be used carefully, and it is generally best to err on the side of too little than too much. To illustrate this point, I would mention what is generally known as veal stuffing. Who has not, at one time or other, tasted a turkey in which it was so highly flavoured that you tasted it all through dinner ? Indeed, at times you may consider yourself fortunate if you don’t taste it all through the next day. How few cooks, too, understand how to use garlic or aromatic flavouring herbs ! It is in the proper blending of these strong flavours that one can detect the hand of the artiste. There are many worse things to eat in hot weather than cold roast beef and salad. Now, it will often be said that if you want a good salad you must go to Paris. Certainly you do get a good salad there invariably ; but it is equally easy to have one at home by simply doing what they do. One principal reason why English people so often have bad salads is that they have an absurd prejudice against oil. Very often, too, when they use oil, the oil is bad. Of course, it is as impossible to make a good salad with bad oil as it is to cook a good dinner with high meat. The oil must be clear, bright, and of a pale yellow colour ; if it looks at all green, it is probably bad. Bearing, therefore, tliis in mind, I will now tell you how to mix a salad, simply repeating the recipe or custom used in ninety-nine out of a hundred French restaurants. First get two or three small French cabbage-lettuces. Wash them, if necessary, in a little cold water, but do not dry them on a cloth, as you will thereby probably bruise them and spoil them. Shake them dry in a little wire basket ; or put them in a cloth, and take the cloth by the four corners, and make the lettuce-leaves jump inside ; then put them lightly into a salad-bowl. Next chop up enough parsley to cover a threepenny-piece, and also chop three fresh mint-leaves, and sprinkle this over the lettuce. Next take a table-spoon, and place in it about half a salt-spoonful of salt, and a quarter of pepper ; fill the table-spoon with oil. Mix up the pepper and salt with the oil, and pour it over the lettuce — I am supposing enough for about four persons — and half a table-spoonful more oil, and toss the lettuce lightly together for two or three minutes. Next add not quite half a table-spoonful of French white vinegar ; mix it for a minute or two more, and it is finished. Now the difficulty in many households is to overcome the prejudice against the oil. Perhaps some one, when they have read this, will do as follows : First take care to have a fresh bottle of good oil ; then mix a salad as I have directed, without telling anybody how it is done. Let it be handed round at dinnertime, and wait and see what people say. If you tell them beforehand that there is nearly two table-spoonfuls of oil, they probably will make up their minds beforehand that it is nasty ; but say nothing, and give the recipe a fair chance. There are two additions to a salad which many thank an advantage : one is to chop up with the parsley and mint one fresh tarragon-leaf ; another is to rub a crust of bread with a piece of garlic, and then