Practical home cookery

If the vinegar be put in before the oil, it is apt to be absorbed by the lettuce-leaves, and consequently one part of the salad will taste sharper than the other ; while if the oil be put in first, and the salad well mixed, each leaf gets coated with oil, and the small quantity of vinegar when added is generally diffused. To my taste the king of salad-dressings is mayonnaise sauce, but before refreshing your memories as to how to make it, I will first describe two exceedingly nice salads, which have the advantage of using up cold vegetables. The first is asparagus salad, and as absolutely no oil is used in compounding it, a description may raise the hopes of some of my readers, who somehow “ never will believe in oil.” We will suppose some properly boiled asparagus has been left from dinner. All that is necessary is to dip the eatable parts or tops in the following sauce. Place the asparagus on a dish, and if any remains over from the sauce pour it on the tops ; the sauce being made as follows : — Melt, but do not heat too much, a little butter — say an ounce — and pour it on to a plate ; mix in with a fork a good teaspoonful of made mustard, a little pepper and salt, and nearly a dessert-spoonful of English vinegar ; stir it all up quickly, and dip in the ends of the asparagus as directed. This is a capital way of using up asparagus, and the salad makes an excellent dish at a supper confined to cold meats. The other salad to which we refer is the old-fashioned dish, potato salad, and is the best made from new potatoes, or rather from potatoes not too old and floury. Considering the number of houses where potatoes are left from the early dinner, and where there is afterwards a supper, it seems strange that potato salad does not form a more frequent dish than it does. The way in which it is compounded is extremely simple. The ” suspicion of onion ” — which can be brought about as before, by simply rubbing the bowl, or if a rather strong flavour of onion is not objected to, by chopping up a small piece of onion finely and adding to the salad — is one requisite ; then slice the potatoes, place them in the bowl, add a little chopped parsley, and if liked, as before, tarragon, and dress the salad exactly as the lettuce was directed to be dressed, adding a little more or less vinegar, according to taste. We must not, in enumerating the various rarer kinds of salads, omit to mention the ordinary English salad and its dressing. The ordinary English salad is a mixture of lettuce, mustard and cress, beetroot, radishes, to which are sometimes added endive and celery. If in season, a little celery is certainly an improvement to a mixed salad of this kind ; and some even recommend a few slices of boiled potatoes. The usual dressing to a salad of this description is made by mixing three or four table-spoonfuls of cream with half a table -spoonful or more of brown sugar, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, about a tea-spoonful of made mustard, pepper and salt, and some add a little oil, though when cream is used there is no occasion for oil, and those who prefer this kind of salad generally object to it.