Culinary jottings

I recommend very strongly that the salad, nicely dressed in its bowl, and the icy-cold sauce in its boat, should be preserved separately, and handed round together. If you mix a salad of this kind before dinner, and let it soak, it deteriorates considerably before the time comes for its service. Cover up your nicely selected well dried lettuce leaves, &c., and they will be crisp, if handed round with their sauce following them, on the arrival of " the roast." This advice holds good with mayonnaise. The meat or fish of which the dish may be composed becomes sodden, and dead, and the green accompaniments fall off in crispness if bathed in dressing. Besides, after the meal, a mixed mayonnaise or salad is wasted, whereas one with which the sauce was separately served may be turned to account. You have in the former case only to pick the meat out of the lettuce leaves, and place it on a separate dish. The plain salad I first mentioned must, of course, be mixed the very last thing before dinner, unless you can boldly rise from the table, and mix it yourself at the exact time that it is wanted. A salad of cold cooked vegetables (salade cuite) can be either served with plain, or rich dressing. For the finest of all see the recipe given elsewhere for salade Russe. Sliced potatoes, beetroot, French beans, and cucumber, go well together : while cauliflower and cabbage, both kinds of artichokes, and asparagus points, are admirable with a plain sauce. vSalade à la Malante is a combination of good things; which will commend itself at once to the appreciative reader : — Take six cold boiled or tinned fonds d'artichauts, fill their hollows with cold boiled or tinned pointes d'asperges, cover the surface with cold sliced truffles that have been stewed in champagne or Madeira, and smother each dressed fond with a rich mayonnaise dressing : — serve straight from the ice-box. This should, of course, be classed as an entremets. The country vegetables I have already alluded to are nice with ordinary salad sauce, or mayonnaise dressing. Choose very young brinjals, boil, and when cold, slice them ; brindjals may be plainly arranged in rows ; young pumpkins must be sliced, and greens should be slightly boiled and drained. Strips of anchovies, well wiped from their tin oil, may be slipped into these salads with satisfactoiy results. The brindjal, Hindi: bhindi, if gathered young and boiled till tender makes an excellent salad in this way : — aiTange the brindjals on a flat dish placed over some crushed ice. With a dessert-knife slit each one open longitudinally ; in the slit put a fillet of anchovy, and over all, pour a little iced salad dressing. The young shoots or stalks of molay, Hindi: chulayi, boiled, drained, and cut up, make, when cold, a capital SALADS. 211 salad : use a plain oil and vinegar dressing, and toss some cliopped olives, onions, and a minced anchovy among the chopped stalks. Here is a noble recipe for a mayonnaise 'a la gouffe for which I have to thank a fair, and most accomplished artiste now in Madras : —