Little French dinners

Watercress and Potato Salad will be found very nice to eat with cold game, poultry, etc. Take some small German potatoes, boil them, and then skin them, and when they are half cold arrange them in the centre of a salad bowl, pouring on each layer some salad dressing composed of three tablespoonfuls of oil, one of tarragon vinegar, one of good clear stock, a little grated onion, pepper and salt to taste. Surround the sliced potatoes completely with fresh watercress, neatly trimmed and washed, and pour the rest of the " dressing " over the whole of the salad, which should be kept in a cool place till wanted. A little chopped tarragon or parsley sprinkled on the top layer of potato adds greatly to the appearance of the salad. Fresh Haricot Beans (Flageolets) make a delicious salad. They should be a pale green colour. Boil them slowly in plenty of boiling salted water till quite tender, then drain them thoroughly, put them in a salad-bowl, well rubbed with a shallot, and pour over them a plain salad dressing made with oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt ; sprinkle on the surface some finely chopped parsley, and serve. A salad of Endive and Shrimps will be found rather a novelty : Mix in a small basin a salad sauce composed of oil and French vinegar (three to one), French mustard, pepper, and salt. Shell about a pint of freshly boiled shrimps, and let them lie in the above sauce for about an hour. Take f our heads of endive ; if necessary, wash them, discarding the outside leaves ; break the endives into convenient pieces, and having dried them thoroughly in a cloth, place them in a salad-bowl, previously rubbed with a shallot or with garlic (if the flavour be approved of). Five minutes before serving, strain the sauce from the shrimps on to the endives, " work " the salad well, then sprinkle in the shrimps, mix the whole well together, and serve at once. Fancy Salads. Salade a la Chicago. — Cut some new carrots, turnips, and potatoes with a crinkled vegetable scoop into the shape of small olives ; cook them all separately in boiling salted water, and when cold lay them for a couple of hours in a marinade composed of oil and vinegar (in the proportions of three to one), seasoned with pepper and salt. Add some gherkins cut in the same shape, a few capers, three or four anchovies (boned, cleaned, and cut up), and some chicken cut in dice with a sprinkling of chopped tarragon. Rub a dish with a shallot, mix some mayonnaise sauce with the vegetables, etc., and heap them xip in a dome shape in the centre of the dish. Ornament it with beetroot cut in rounds with a fluted cutter the size of a halfpenny, alternated with gherkins sliced about half the size; surround with quartered hard-boiled eggs. Salade a la Danoise. — Take equal quantities of macaroni and any sort of flaky fish. Cook the former in boiling salted water, and when done put it on one side to <lrain ; then, having boiled the fish also in salted water, let it get cold, break it up into flakes, which put on a plate, and add a little tarragon vinegar with a sprinkling of pepper and salt. Then beat up a gill and a half of cream, not too stiffly, and mix with it a moderate sized horseradish grated and a pinch of sugar. Toss the fish and H 2 ioo Fancy Salads.