Cassell's dictionary of cookery

Salad Vinegar.— Take three ounces each of shallots, sweet savory, chives, and tarragon. Bruise them in a mortar, put them into a large stone jar, and with them two table-spoonfuls of dried and powdered mint, and the same of balm. Pour over all a gallon of the best vinegar, cork the bottle securely, and put it in the sun. At the end of a fortnight strain the vinegar through a filtering bag, put it into small bottles, cork these tightly, and use the vinegar for salads, &c., instead of ordinary vinegar. " Salade " (a pickle for present use). — Almost fill a quart stone jar with equal quantities of peeled onions, pared cucumbers, and sour apples, all cut into thin slices. Whilst filling the jar sprinkle in a dessert-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful and a half of cayenne, two wine-glassfuls of soy, and two wine-glassfuls of white wine. Fill up the jar with vinegar, cover the pickle with bladder, and store in a cool dry place. The preparation may he used the same day. Salads.— Recipes for the following salads will be found under their respective headings : — Anchovy Moor Game, a la Artichoke Soyer Beans, French Nantese Beetroot Orange Celery Partridge Chicken, Plain Poet's Recipe Chicken, Rich Potato Crab Potatoes en Salade Currant Ptarmigan Egg Rabbit Endive with Winter Rabbit, Simple Salad Raspberry Fish Remoilade, French French Salad Dressing German Remoulade, Green Grouse Remoulade, Indian Grouse a la Soyer Rochelle Hamburg Beef Russian Hop, German Salmagundi Indian Salsify Italian Sauce Kitchiner's Mix- Shikaree ture Sidney Smith's {see Lettuce, German Poet's Recipe) Lettuce in Salads Spanish Lobster Strawberry Lobster, German Summer Lobster Salad Turbot Dressing Vegetable Mixture {see Kit- Vinegar chiner's Salad Watercress Mixture) Winter " Our ancestors," says a great culinary authority, " served salads with roasted meat, roasted poultry, &c. They had a great many which are no longer in vogue. They ate leeks cooked in the wood-ashes, and seasoned with salt and honey ; borage, mint, and parsley, with salt and oil ; lettuce, fennel, mint, chervil, parsley, and elderflowers, mixed together. They also classed among their salads an agglomeration of feet, heads, cocks' combs, and fowls' livers, cooked, and seasoned with parsley, mint, vinegar, pepper, and cinnamon. Nettles, and the twigs of rosemary formed delicious salads for our forefathers ; and to these they sometimes added pickled gherkins." Salads, Wholesomeness of. — For persons of weak digestion, salads as a rule are not suited. When, however, the stomach is equal to the work, they appear generally to exercise a beneficial effect on the system, particularly in the case of salads derived from the tribe of the cruciferous plants, to which the Watercress, radish, mustard, cress, scurvy-grass, and suchlike, belong. " Many persons," says a medical writer, "with whom raw vegetables, such as salads, cucumbers, &c., invariably disagree if eaten ' undressed,' find the addition of the ordinary salad or ' Florence ' oil correct the tendency. In this country some individuals have a prejudice against the use of oil. It is difficult to see why it should extend to the beautiful preparation in question." Salads are eaten as a condiment, not as an article of aliment.