ON SALAD

N 1664, if my memory serves me rightly, John Evelyn wrote a treatise “ On Salets,” in a small volume, which I pos- sess in my library ; but I cannot, at this moment, lay my hand on the little book. Though curious in a certain sense, the treatise would be found more useful for the horticulturist than for the cook. Salads are now, as in Evelyn’s day, composed of cer- tain pot-herbs, to which are added various aromatical odoriferous herbs, or fournitures (that is the term of art in French cookery), which greatly add to the zest of the mixture. There are about twelve of these herbes cle fourniture, as they are called, namely, gar- den-cress, water-cress, chervil, chives, scallions or green onions, tarragon, pimpernel or burnet, parsley pert, hartshorn, sweet basil, purslain, fennel, and young balsam. Cresses are wholesome and anti-scorbutic, chervil is a purifier, chives a stimulant, tarragon sto- machic and corroborant, while parsley is carminative}

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and the remaining herbs are all pronounced by Lemery in his “ Trait6 des Aliments,” to have medi- cinal virtues. Salads, of course, vary according to the season. Chicoree or endive, is in season at the end of autumn, and it is not usual to add any herbe de fourniture to that salad. Some, in France, place at the bottom of the salad-basin containing an endive salad, a small crust of stale bread rubbed over with Lrlic, which gives a slight flavour to the dish. Later in the season, another species of chicorSe, called scarole, is had recourse to. It is not so tender as chicory or succory, but has as much flavour, and is

I quite as wholesome. Chicory or succory is, accord- ing to Lemery, of a moistening and cooling nature, and creates an appetite. Winter salads are generally composed of mdche or corn salad, rampions (which, according to Lemery, “ fortify the stomach, help di- gestion, are detersive, and agree with every age and constitution”), and chopped celery. Sometimes, also, in winter, a salad is made exclusively of chopped celery, seasoned with oil and mustard.

Garden or water-cress is also a winter salad. It is good to mix it with slices of beetroot; and in France, more especially in Provence, olives are often added. Towards February, the salad most in vogue is an en- dive called barbe de Capucin, or Capucin’s beard. It is seasoned like the white succory.

The lettuce, known in England for more than three centuries, generally appears about the com-

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mencement of Lent, but the better sort of lettuce does not make its appearance before Easter. It is the most popular of all salads, and possesses soothing properties. Herbes de fourniture are added to it, with which anchovies and chopped chives are mixed. Sometimes, to vary the dish, prawns and shrimps are likewise thrown in.

Next comes the Roman lettuce, less watery, and with much fuller and finer flavour than the pre- ceding, especially when the leaves are streaked. The Roman lettuce is sometimes served with odoriferous herbs, but hard eggs are rarely added to the season- ing. Roman lettuce is in season from May to the end of Autumn.

Besides these, there are hotch-potch salads, made en Macedoine, with a variety of roots and vegetables, such as French beans, haricots blancs, lentils, small onions, beetroot, saxifrage, or goat’s beard (called in French, salsifis), potatoes, carrots, artichoke-bottoms, asparagus -tops, gherkins, sliced anchovies, soused tunny, olives, truffles, &c.

There are salads also of meat, fish, and game. A salade a Vitalienne is composed of cold fowl cut up in pieces, and served with anchovies and dressed salad. Sometimes this salad is made with a cold partridge ; and very relishing it is.

I insert here Car^me’s receipt for a salade de poidets a la Reine. It will be seen that, like all his receipts, it would be somewhat costly : — “ Dress in a poele, or

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r0ast four fine chickens, and when cold cut them in pieces, as for a fricassee; lay the pieces in a basin, with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, whole parsley washed, a small onion sliced, or a shalot, and cover with a round piece of paper; leave them in this seasoning for some hours; boil eight eggs of the same size hard, and take otf the shells ; wash six fine lettuces ; half an hour before serving, drain the fowl upon a napkin, separating the small pieces of parsley and onions, take the leaves from the lettuces, preserving the hearts very small, cut the leaves small, season them as a salad usually is, and turn them into the dish; lay upon them in a circle the eight thighs of the fowls, in the centre put the wings, upon the top of the thighs lay the rumps and two of the breasts only, surmount these with the fillets, laying one the smooth side upwards, and the next the contrary way, or up- side down (as four are taken from the left, and four from the right side), on these lay the two other breasts ; be careful to keep this entree very neat and very upright; make a border of eggs cut in eight pieces, and between each quarter place upright small hearts of lettuces, each heart cut in four or even six pieces; place half an egg, in which fix upright a heart of lettuce, and place it on the summit of the salad ; then mix in a basin a good pinch of chervil and some tarragon leaves, both being chopped and blanched, with salt, pepper, oil, ravigote vinegar, and a spoonful of aspic jelly, chopped small; the

On Salad.

whole well mingled, pour it over the salad and serve 1 immediately.”

The vinegar used in salads should alwavs be wine vinegar, not pyroligneous acid.

Chaptal, the great chymist, and afterwards Minister of the Interior, in France, has given a receipt for dressing salad. He directs that the salad should be saturated with oil, and seasoned with salt and pepper, before the vinegar is added. It results from this process that there never can be too much vinegar, for, from the specific gravity of the vinegar compared with oil, what is more than needful will fall to the bottom of the salad bowl. The salt should not be dissolved in the vinegar, but in the oil, by which means it is more equally distributed through the salad.

There are also salads of lemons, oranges, pome- granates, pears, apples, &c. ; but these will be more properly spoken of under the head Dessert.

The following receipt for a winter salad is from the pen of one of the wittiest men, and one of the purest writers of England of this generation, the late Sydney Smith: —

“ Two large potatos, passed through kitchen sieve, Unwonted softness to the salad give.

Of mordent mustard add a single spoon ;

Distrust the condiment which bites so soon;

But deem it not, thoii man of herbs, a fault To add a double quantity of salt.

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Three times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,

And once with vinegar procured from town.

True flavour needs it, and your poet begs,

The pounded yellow of two well-boiled eggs.

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,

And, scarce suspected, animate the whole ;

And lastly, on the flavoured compound toss A magic teaspoon of anchovy sauce.

Then, though green turtle fail, though venison’s tough,

And ham and turkey are not boiled enough,

Serenely full the Epicure may say,—

Fate cannot harm me — I have dined to-day !

The Spanish proverb says, that to make a perfect salad, there should be a miser for oil, a spendthrift for vinegar, a wise man for salt, and a madcap to stir the ingredients up and mix them well together. The proverb is perfect with the exception of the last member of the sentence. A patient and discreet man, a painstaking and careful man or woman should, be entrusted with the duty of mixing the salad with its seasoning.

The French say, “ II faut bien fatiguer la salade.” It is said by a dramatic writer,

“ Toute franQaise a ce que j’imagine,

Sait bien ou mal faire un peu de cuisine

and the same may be said of every Frenchman. Some of the emigrants, who fled to England and other coun- tries between 1790 and 1804, gained their livelihood by giving lessons in cookery; and Brillat Savarin tells us, in one of his chapters, that when in emigration at Boston, in America, he taught the restaurateur Julien

On Salad.

to make ceufs brouillcs au fromage. Captain Collet, also, he tells, made a great deal of money at New York in 1794 and 1795, in making ices and sorbets. In my earlier days there were two Frenchmen in London who made good incomes by dressing salads, and each of them kept his cabriolet'. One took as a fee 10s. 6d., but the other charged a guinea.

In an article, headed “ Industrie gastronomique des Emigres,” Brillat Savarin thus speaks of a famous salad-dresser : —

“ In passing through Cologne I met a Breton gen- tleman who made a good thing of it by becoming a traiteur. I might multiply examples of this kind to an indefinite extent, but I prefer relating, as more singular, the history of a Frenchman who acquired a fortune in London by his cleverness in making a salad. He was a Limousin, and, if my memory serve me rightly, called himself d’Aubignac, or d’Al- bignac. Though his means were very small sub- sequent to his emigration, he happened to dine one day at one of the most famous taverns of London. Whilst he was in the act of finishing a slice of juicy roast beef, five or six young men of the first families were regaling themselves at a neighbouring table. One among them stood up, and, addressing the French- man in a polite tone, said, £ Sir, it is a general opinion that your nation excels in the art of making a salad, would you have the goodness to favour us by mixing one for us?’ D’Albignac, after some hesitation, con-

On Salad.

seated, asked for the necessary materials, and having taken pains to mix a perfect salad, had the good for- tune to succeed. While the salad was in process of mixing, he candidly answered all questions addressed to him on his situation and prospects; stated he was an emigrant, and confessed, not without a slight blush, that he received pecuniary aid from the British government. It was this avowal, doubtless, which induced one of the young men to slip into his hand a five-pound note, which, after a slight resistance, he accepted. He gave the young man his address, and some time afterwards was not a little surprised to re- ceive a letter, in which he was asked in the politest terms to come and dress a salad in one of the best houses in Grosvenor Square. D’ Albignac, who began to have a distant glimmering of durable advantage, did not hesitate an instant, and arrived punctually, fortified with some new ingredients destined to add new relish to his mixture. He had the good fortune to succeed a second time, and received on this occa- sion such a sum as he could not have refused without injuring himself in more ways than one.

“ This second success made more noise than the first, so that the reputation of the emigrant quickly ex- tended. He soon became known as the fashionable salad-maker; and in a country so much led by fashion, all that was elegant in the capital of the three king- doms would have a salad made by him. D’Albignac, like a man of sense, profited by his popularity. He

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soon sported a vehicle, in order the more readily to transport him from place to place, together with a livery servant carrying in a mahogany case every- thing necessai'y, such as differently perfumed vinegars, oils with or without the taste of fruit, soy, caviare, truffles, anchovies, ketchup gravy, some yolks of eggs. Subsequently he caused similar cases to be manufactured, which he furnished and sold by hun- dreds. By degrees the salad.-dresser realised a fortune of 80,000 francs, with which he ultimately returned to France.”

Three centuries ago, we learn from Champier, who wrote in 1560, that many materials were used for salads which are not thought of now ; among others, fennel, marshmallow-tops, hops, wild marjoram, elder-flowers, and a species of nettle. Tomatas and asparagus were also at this period used as salads.

In a “Memoire pour faire un Ecriteau pour un Ban- quet,” published in the sixteenth century, I find in the list of salads the following : —

1. Salade blanche.

2. Salade verte.

3. Salade de citron.

4. Salade d’entremets.

5. Salade de grenade.

6. Salade de Iioublon.

7. Salade de laitues.

8. Salade d’olives.

9. Salade de perce-pierre.

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10. Salade de poires de bon cretien.

11. Salade de pourpier confit.

We know better in our day than to make a salad of asparagus. Dr. Roques thus speaks of asparagus in bis “ Observations sur les Plantes usuelles . The as paragus grows naturally in the woods, in the hedges, in the sea-sand, and on the banks of rivers. The ancients knew and cultivated asparagus. Athenaeus speaks of field and mountain asparagus; he says the best are those which grow naturally, without being sown. Martial, Pliny, and Juvenal also speak of asparagus. The Romans especially esteemed those of Ravenna. Nature, says Pliny, wished that asparagus should grow wild so that they might be gathered eveiy where by everyone; but being improved by cultiva- tion, the blades astonish by their thickness. They are sold at Ravenna at three to the pound.”

In Covent Garden Market, in the season, it is very common to find asparagus so fat that six weign a pound.

Why is Dr. Roques so silent as to the velocity with which this vegetable may be cooked ? Quicker than asparagus is boiled, became a proverb among the Romans.* Juvenal mentions a large lobstei sur- rounded with asparagus, and promises, in the eleventh satire to his friend P erseus, a plate of mountain

* “ Velocius quarn asparagi coquuntur. Suet.

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asparagus, which had been freshly gathered by Ids farmer’s wife.

Asparagi, posito quos legit villica fuso.”

I remember having read somewhere of a gentleman travelling near the town of Arras (where Robes- pierre was born), and meeting a countryman who in- sisted on supping with him. Entering an inn, the gentleman asked for an omelette and some asparagus. After having helped the rustic to his half-share of the omelette, the stupid lout asked what were the aspara- gus. “Oh! ” replied the host, “they are a very fine vegetable, and you shall have half of the bunch, as you have had half of the omelette .” Thereupon the intelli- gent gourmand transferred to his neighbour’s plate the ends, or as the late Mr. Justice Creswell quaintly, yet forcibly used to say it, the handle of the esculent, who thought these quisquilice tougher to chew than the stalky part of the cabbage.

The Marquis de Cussy tells us that no less a per- sonage than Napoleon ate the haricots de soissons, or kidney-beans with oil, as a salad.