Practical home cookery

the assistance of a blade of a steel knife — will find but little instruction from our remarks. We will commence with giving simple instructions for dressing an ordinary salad, composed of plain lettuce. First, have ready a salad-bowl sufficiently large to enable the salad-dresser to toss the lettuce lightly together. Next, the lettuce should be crisp, but not too hard, and we would advise that the hard stalk part (which, by the way, many persons think the best part) be not put in. This, of course, however, is a matter of taste. Then, if possible, don’t wash the lettuce at all ; examine every leaf carefully and wipe it clean, and remove any specks of garden-mould that may be on it, and in wiping be particularly careful not to crush or bruise the lettuce. Sometimes, and indeed often, washing is absolutely indispensable ; when this is the case, however, bear in mind the importance of leaving the lettuce to soak in the water as little as possible ; next, when the lettuce has been washed, it must of course be dried ; the best plan being to shake it in a little wire basket, which can be swung round in the open air. These wire baskets are sold in the streets by men who go about with skewers and penny gridirons, and are well worth buying. If you possess a whitebait basket, that will answer the purpose admirably. Another method of drying the lettuce is to put it in a clean, dry cloth, and take the cloth by the four corners and shake it lightly ; the drops of water shake off, and are absorbed by the cloth, but the lettuce does not get bruised. Next chop up finely about enough parsley to fill a small salt-spoon, and with it one or two leaves of fresh tarragon (we will suppose you are mixing salad enough for four persons) ; sprinkle this over the lettuce in the bowl, which, if the flavour is liked, may be first rubbed inside with a slice of onion, or better still, a bead of garlic. In giving this onion or garlic flavour to a salad, too great care cannot be taken to avoid overdoing it. Sydney Smith wrote a recipe lOI on dressing salad, so well known that we will not repeat it in full, with the exception of the two admirable lines which every one should know by heart : — “ Let onions’ atoms lurk within the bowl, And, scarce suspected, animate the whole.” There are various ingredients used in cooking which can only be used as here directed — viz., ” scarce suspected.” Garlic is essentially one of these, as well as nutmeg, allspice, mace, etc. But to return to the salad which requires dressing. Place in a table-spoon a small salt -spoonful of salt, about half of pepper, then fill up the spoon with good fresh Lucca oil, stir it quietly with a fork, and pour over the salad and toss it lightly about ; add another table-spoonful of oil, and continue the mixing ; and finish by adding about half a tablespoonful of English vinegar, or rather less of French white-wine vinegar. We ought in this country to be very careful before we set up our opinions on such a subject as cooking before the French. Now, some French cookery-books I have seen maintain that in dressing a salad it does not matter whether you put in the oil first or the vinegar. For my part I think it does.