BOUND THE TABLE

painting — once you have mixed your salad, there it is, for better or for worse. A sauce or a ragout you may modify, correct, and alter in many ways as you go on ; a salad you cannot, without making a mess of the whole thing, when once you have mixed the greenmeat with the dressing. Practice is the only master of whom to learn salad-making. I do not pretend to teach anyone how to make salads ; all I can do is to point out, to those who wish to become adepts in the art, how to set about it.

Oil, which plays the most important part in the busi- ness, should be of the very finest quality, but it ought by no means to be the almost colourless and insipid liquid which is, I believe, called Jew’s oil. There should be a taste of olive in it, but not so strong as to be disagreeable. It is a quasi nutty flavour that it should have, and the colour should be golden.

The artistic salad-maker cannot be too particular in the choice of the vinegar to be used in his preparations. The British vinegar of commerce may be all very well for cooking purposes, pickling, &c. ; but, for salads, vinegar made from wine should be used, and it should be clarified until it is almost as clear as water. The stronger the vinegar is, the better.

At some first-class Italian warehouses good French vinegar is procurable; but it may not here be out of place if I describe the process by which a constant supply of Wine Yinegae, after the Gallic fashion, can be obtained.

Get a small oaken cask, which has once contained wine. Heat to boiling point half a gallon of the best French vinegar, pour it into the cask, and roll it about in all directions; after which half fill your cask with some good white wine. Place it by the side of the kitchen fire, or, if in summer, in the open air, in a place

well exposed to tlie sun. At tlie end of a week or so throw in another half-gallon of boiling vinegar, and nearly fill up the cask with white wine. Leave the bung partially open, and in six weeks you can begin to draw as good vinegar as can be wished for. If every time any vinegar is drawn it is replaced by an equal quantity of white wine, the supply will never fail ; and if at the outset a certain quantity of brandy be put into the cask, the quality and strength of the vinegar will be improved thereby.

Vinegar greatly improves by age, especially when a vinegar plant — or “ mother ” — forms in the cask ; but this can be insured by procuring a vinegar plant and puttiDg it into the cask. None but wooden taps should be used to a vinegar cask, and the bung-hole should be covered with a piece of muslin or may be stopped up, and an air-hole made in the head of the cask and covered with muslin ; for, in spite of the proverb, flies will be caught by vinegar.

When the acidification is complete, and the vinegar ready for use, the cask should be kept in a warm and dry spot, never in a cellar.

To clarify vinegar, mix a wine-glassful of milk with a bottle of vinegar ; then make a cone or filter of filtering paper, which you place in a glass funnel ; pour the mix- ture into this very carefully, and in due course the vinegar will come through as clear as can be desired.

For purposes of salad-making and cooking generally, vinegar is flavoured in a variety of ways. This is done by putting some strong wine vinegar into a wide-mouthed bottle, and adding to it any of the following :

1. A couple of handfuls of tarragon leaves, gathered the day before.

2. Twenty or thirty green capsicums, previously bruised.