Put into the centre of the bowl some cold dressed French beans or scarlet runners, and before serving pour over some good mayonnaise. Garnish the beans with three tomatoes cut in slices and arranged in a circle one overlapping the other.
German salad is made from cold boiled vegetables chopped up. In Germany, it is made, according to English ideas, from every vegetable you have ever heard of, mixed with a number of vegetables you have never heard of. In England it can be made by chopping up boiled carrot, turnip, cabbage, cauliflower, potato, French beans, Brussels sprouts (whole), celery, raw onion, raw apple, &c. In fact, in making this vegetable salad the motto should be "the more the merrier." In addition to this you will find that they add what is known as sauer kraut. This latter is not adapted, as a rule, to English palates. The salad is mixed with oil and vinegar in the ordinary way, the Germans adding much more vinegar than we should care for in this country. The salad is decorated at the finish with boiled beet-root. It is very pretty to cut the beet-root into triangles, the base of the triangle touching the edge of the salad-bowl, the point of the triangle pointing inwards. Gut a star out of a good slice of beet-root, and place it in the centre of the bowl; sprinkle a little chopped blanched parsley over the surface of the mixed vegetables.
1 large lettuce, 1 head endive, mustard and cress, watercress, 2 spring onions, 2 tomatoes, two hard-boiled eggs. Shred the lettuce, endive, onions, tomatoes, and cress, place in a salad bowl with mayonnaise dressing, decorate with slices of egg and tomato and tufts of cress.
This can be made from cold, boiled, dried white haricot beans. Add plenty of chopped parsley, rub the bowl with garlic, mix oil, pepper and salt first, vinegar afterwards. The nicest haricot bean salad is made from the fresh green beans met with abroad. They can be obtained in this country in tins, and a delicious salad can be had at a moment's notice by opening a tin, straining off the liquor, and drying the little green beans, which are very soft and tender, and dressing them with oil and vinegar, in the ordinary way. A little chopped parsley, or garlic flavouring by rubbing the bowl, can be added or not, according to taste.
A medium-sized boiled cauliflower, 3 boiled potatoes, juice of 1/2 a lemon, 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of oil. Cut up finely the cauliflower and potatoes when cold, mix well with the dressing, and pepper and salt to taste. A little mayonnaise is an improvement, but makes it rich.
Probably the most patriotic Englishman will admit that, on the subject of salads, we can learn something from the French. During the last half-century a great improvement has taken place on this point in this country. Many years ago it was the fashion to dress an English lettuce, resembling in shape an old umbrella, with a mixture of brown sugar, milk, mustard, and even anchovy and Worcester sauce, and then add a few drops of oil, as if it were some dangerous poison, like prussic acid, not to be tampered with lightly. The old-fashioned lettuces were so hard and crisp that it was difficult to chew them without making a noise somewhat similar to walking on a shingly beach. In modern days, however, we have arrived at a stage of civilisation in which, as a rule, we use soft French lettuces instead of the hard gingham-shaped vegetables which somehow or other our grandfathers ate for supper with a whole lobster, seasoned with about half a pint of vinegar, and then slept none the worse for the performance. The first point for consideration, if we wish to have a good salad, is to have the lettuces crisp and dry. Old-fashioned French cookery-books direct that the lettuce should never be washed. The stalks should be cut off, the outside leaves removed and thrown away, and the lettuce itself should then be pulled in pieces with the fingers, and each piece wiped with a clean cloth. This is not always practicable, but the principle remains the same. You can wash the lettuce leaves without bruising them. You can dry them by shaking them up lightly in a large clean cloth, and you can spread them out and let them get dry an hour or two before they are dressed. Another important point to be borne in mind is that a salad should never be dressed till just before it is wanted to be eaten. If by chance you put by the remains of a dressed salad, it is good for nothing the next morning. Finally, the oil must be pure olive oil of the best quality, and to ensure this it should bear the name of some well-known firm. A good deal of the oil sold simply as salad oil, bearing no name, is adulterated, sometimes with cotton-seed oil.
Cold boiled French beans make a very nice salad. A little chopped parsley should be mixed with them, and the salad-bowl can be rubbed with a bead of garlic. Some people soak the beans in vinegar first, and then add oil. This would suit a German palate. A better plan is to add the oil first, with pepper and salt, mix all well together, and then add the vinegar.
Melon is sometimes served abroad as a salad, and a slice of melon is often sent to table at the commencement of dinner, to be eaten with a little salt, cayenne pepper, and sometimes oil and vinegar.
This, as the word implies, is a mixture of various vegetables, the chief of which are generally chopped-up carrot and turnip with young green peas. A very nice dish which can be served at a very short notice, if you have curry sauce in bottles, is a dish of vegetable curry. The macedoines should be made hot in the tin, the liquor drained off, and the curry sauce, made hot, should be poured into a well made in the centre of the macedoines in the dish. Macedoines are also very useful, as they can be served as a vegetable salad at a moment's notice, as the vegetables are sufficiently cooked without being made hot.
1 large boiled Spanish onion, 3 large boiled potatoes, 1 teaspoonful of parsley, pepper and salt to taste, juice of 1 lemon, 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of olive oil. Slice the onion and potatoes when quite cold, mix well together with the parsley and pepper and salt; add the lemon juice and oil, and mix well once more.
