Mix one saltspoon of pepper with one of salt; add three tablespoonfuls of olive oil and one even tablespoonful of onion scraped fine; then one tablespoonful of vinegar; when well mixed, pour the mixture over your salad and stir all till well mingled. The merit of a salad is that it should be cool, fresh and crisp. For vegetables use only the delicate white stalks of celery, the small heart-leaves of lettuce; or tenderest stalks and leaves of the white cabbage. Keep the vegetable portion crisp and fresh until the time for serving, when add the meat. For chicken and fish salads use the "Mayonnaise dressing." For simple vegetable salads the French dressing is most appropriate, using onion rather than garlic.
1 cup left-over meat or fish 3 tablespoons chopped pickle 1/2 cup chopped celery 1 cup cooked salad dressing
Mix ingredients thoroughly and serve. If one-quarter cup of French dressing is mixed with meat or fish, 30 minutes before adding other ingredients, the flavor is much improved.
If the fish is whole, take off the head and skin, and then place it in the centre of a dish. Have two cold hard-boiled eggs, and cut fine with a silver knife or spoon, (steel turns the egg black). Sprinkle the fish with this, and garnish either with small lettuce leaves, water-cresses, or cold boiled potatoes and beets, cut in slices. Place tastefully around the dish, with here and there a sprig of parsley. Serve the vinaigrette sauce in a separate dish. Help to the garnish when the fish is served, and pour a spoonful of the sauce over the fish as you serve it. This makes a nice dish for tea in summer, and takes the place of a salad, as it is, in fact, a kind of salad. If the fish is left from the dinner, and is broken, pick free from skin and bones, heap it lightly in the centre of the dish, sprinkle the sauce over it, and set away in a cool place until tea time. Then add the garnish, and serve as before. Many people prefer the latter method, as the fish is seasoned better and more easily served. The cold fish remaining from a bake or broil can be served in the same manner. This same dish can be served with a sauce piquante or Tartare sauce, for a change.
Take a fresh white fish or trout, boil and chop it, but not too fine; put with the same quantity of chopped cabbage, celery or lettuce; season the same as chicken salad. Garnish with the tender leaves of the heart of lettuce.
One pint of oysters, two eggs, one pint of flour, one heaping teaspoonful of salt, one table-spoonful of salad oil, enough water with the oyster liquor to make a scant half pint. Drain and chop the oysters. Add the water and salt to the liquor. Pour part of this on the flour, and when smooth, add the remainder. Add the oil and the eggs, well beaten. Stir the oysters into the batter. Drop small spoonfuls of this into boiling fat, and fry until brown. Drain, and serve hot.
The dishes on which meats, fish, jellies and creams are placed should be large enough to leave a margin of an inch or so between the food and the lower edge of the border of the dish. It is well to pour the sauce for cold puddings around the pudding, especially if there will be a contrast in color. It is a great improvement to have the sauce poured around the article instead of over it, and to have the border of the dish garnished with bits of parsley, celery tops or carrot leaves. When sauce is poured around meat or fish the dish must be quite hot, or the sauce will cool quickly. Small rolls or sticks of bread are served with soup. Potatoes and bread are usually served with fish, but many people prefer to serve only bread. Butter is not served at the more elegant dinners. Two vegetables will be sufficient in any course. Cold dishes should be very cold, and hot dishes hot. It is a good idea to have a dish of sliced lemons for any kind of fish, and especially for those broiled or fried. Melons, cantelopes, cucumbers and radishes, and tomatoes, when served in slices, should all be chilled in the ice chest. Be particular not to overdo the work of decorating. Even a simple garnish adds much to the appearance of a dish, but too much decoration only injures it. Garnishes should be so arranged as not to interfere with serving. Potato-balls and thin fried potatoes make a nice garnish for all kinds of fried and broiled meats and fish. Cold boiled beets, carrots and turnips, and the whites of hard-boiled eggs, stamped out with a fancy vegetable cutter, make a pretty garnish for cold or hot meats. Thin slices of toast, cut into triangles, make a good garnish for many dishes. Whipped cream is a delicate garnish for all Bavarian dreams, blanc- manges, frozen puddings and ice creams. Arrange around jellies or creams a border of any kind of delicate green, like smilax or parsley, or of rose leaves, and dot it with bright colors--pinks, geraniums, verbenas or roses. Remember that the green should be dark and the flowers small and bright. A bunch of artificial rose leaves, for decorating dishes of fruit at evening parties, lasts for years. Natural leaves are preferable when they can be obtained. Wild roses, buttercups and nasturtiums, if not used too freely, we suitable for garnishing a salad.
Take a pound or so of cold boiled fish (halibut, rock or cod), not chop, but cut, into pieces an inch in length. Mix in a bowl a dressing as follows: The yolks of four boiled eggs rubbed to a smooth paste with salad oil or butter; add to these salt, pepper, mustard, two teaspoonfuls of white sugar, and, lastly, six tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Beat the mixture until light, and just before pouring it over the fish, stir in lightly the frothed white of a raw egg. Serve the fish in a glass dish, with half the dressing stirred in with it. Spread the remainder over the top, and lay lettuce leaves (from the core of the head of lettuce) around the edges, to be eaten with it.
Arrange one quart of any kind of cooked fish on a bed of crisp lettuce. Split six sardines, and if there are any bones, remove them. Cover the fish with the sardine dressing. Over this put the sardines, having the ends meet in the centre of the dish. At the base, of the dish mate a wreath of thin slices of lemon. Garnish with parsley or lettuce, and serve immediately.
Salads form such a pleasant item in the menu, particularly during the hot season, that they should be regarded as a daily dish. There are no scraps of fish, poultry, meat, or cold boiled vegetables, but what can be turned to account in this way. If these are utilised, a great variety can be obtained at a very trifling cost; in fact these dainty tit-bits can often be made of food that otherwise would be thrown away. Cold cauliflowers, beans, peas, and potatoes are particularly nice in salads.
