Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

SALAD OF CUCUMBER WITH TOMATOES 381 in narrow strips a quarter of an inch wide and two long. Sprinkle with salt, drain off the moisture, and season with freshly-ground pepper. Sprinkle over all enough salad oil to moisten nicely, and a few drops of fine French vinegar. Let this lie while you cut up and squeeze through a sieve the moisture out of four tomatoes (about half a pound) . Catch this liquid in a bowl and pour it over the cucumber, sprinkling the surface with a dessertspoonful of finely-minced Ravigote — i.e., equal parts of chives, chervil, tarragon, and burnet. A slice of white bread should be laid in each salad plate. [Wyvern.] Salads cannot be served too cold. The American fashion is to have a double salad bowl, and to fill the outer division with broken ice. These convenient bowls can now be purchased in London. Recipes for Chicken Salad, Lobster Salad, Crab Salad, and Prawn Salad will be found under their respective headings. Salmon Salad a la Parmentier,— Take a pound and half of cold cooked Salmon, peel off the skin, and cut the fish into neat pieces. Lay these on a dish, dust them over with pepper and salt, and sprinkle with salad oil and vinegar. Prepare a garnish of cooked fillets of potato, or use a dozen small ones the size of a plover’s egg (see Olive Potatoes). Make two gills of mayonnaise sauce, turning it pale green with the juice of the leaves of one bunch of watercress squeezed after boiling them for five minutes, draining, cooling, and drying them. Finish with a tablespoonful of very finely-minced chervil, chives, and tarragon. Arrange the pieces of salmon in a dome in the centre of a flat dish, mask with the sauce, and garnish round with a chain of the potatoes, and a few of the nicest leaves of a cos lettuce, torn (not cut) into small pieces. [Wyvern.]Spinach colouring may be used instead of watercress. A Salletine was one of the favourite dishes of the seventeenth century. This was made by putting cowslips, clove-gillyflowers, elder flowers, and marigolds, in their seasons, into a bowl. A pickle was made by boiling a pound of loaf sugar in a pint of white-wine-vinegar, and this was poured scalding hot over each pound of flowers. The Salletine was then closely covered, and eaten when quite cold. HERBS. Herbs, both fresh and dried, are a most important element in those flavours derived from tbe garden which are so infinitely superior to those purchased from the grocer. Gardeners should therefore be induced to gather the herbs when at their best and before they flower, instead of leaving them till the autumn, when the leaves are old and the stalks woody. Thyme, mint, and parsley can be grown in a shalloAv box during the winter quite as easily as mustard and cress, and of course fresh herbs are infinitely superior to those which have been dried. The herbs which are most useful in a garden are thyme, lemon thyme, mint, sage, chervil, tarragon, parsley, and chives. Sweet marjoram, burnet, winter savory, and sweet basil are all very useful. Herbs take little room, and require no attention after they are once sown. If a place can be found for a bush of rosemary and a small bay tree they will both be of use in flavouring. To those who have not gardens the excellent dried herbs sold by Messrs. Bruce & McCulloch, Covent Garden Market, or Messrs. Pannett & Sons, 342 Wandsworth Road, are strongly recommended.