Part 33

=Hot Potato Salad.=--Cut boiled potatoes in very thin slices. Cover the bottom of a baking dish with potatoes, season with salt and pepper, sprinkle with finely chopped celery, then with finely chopped parsley. Mix four tablespoonfuls of cider vinegar, and four tablespoonfuls of olive oil. Add a slice of lemon cut one-third of an inch thick. Bring to the boiling point, pour over the potatoes, cover, and let it stand in a moderate oven till thoroughly heated. If possible, serve in the same dish in which the salad is heated.

=Lettuce Salad.=--Use only the tender leaves; wash well in cold water, wipe them dry, then break with the fingers into small pieces. Take two or three yolks of hard-boiled eggs beaten up with one tablespoonful of pure olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Two more tablespoonfuls of oil must be added gradually, and one of white wine vinegar. Mix well, and garnish the salad bowl with nasturtium flowers.

=Lettuce Salad (2).=--Take the hearts of two lettuces, wash well, and dry in a cloth. Place in a salad bowl with two hard-boiled eggs cut in quarters; salt and pepper to taste. Pour over two tablespoonfuls of oil and one of vinegar, mix well. The vinegar must never be put over the lettuce until it is wanted. It will spoil the salad if left standing, before it is used.

=Mexican Salad.=--Chop finely the meat of one dozen English walnuts. Wash, and place lettuce leaves round the salad bowl, and over these in the bottom of the bowl arrange two peeled bananas cut into thin slices. Mix the chopped walnuts with mayonnaise dressing, and spread over the bananas with a few bits of the half leaves of lettuce. Make another layer of bananas and dressing. Serve a spoonful of the salad on two nice leaves of lettuce; put a dash of paprika over the whole.

=Mixed Salad.=--Take one small cooked cauliflower, one cooked beetroot, one small cucumber, two or three firm cooked potatoes, two ripe tomatoes, one crisp lettuce, half a pint mayonnaise sauce or salad dressing. Divide the cauliflower into small sprays, cut the beetroot and potatoes into fine strips, slice the cucumber and tomatoes. Place all these ingredients in layers in a salad bowl, piling somewhat high in the centre, and season each layer with salt and pepper. Pour over the salad dressing, and garnish with a border of lettuce previously well washed and dried.

=Neufchâtel Cheese Salad.=--Line a bowl with lettuce, and if you like the flavour of onion rub each leaf with a cut onion; put the cheese through a fruit-press or wire-strainer over the lettuce. When ready to serve, pour over one half cup of French dressing. If you have a few pieces of red beet, it is very attractive to garnish the edge of the dish with beets. This makes a very tasty salad.--Philadelphia, North American.

=Normandy Salad.=--Stew gently in their own liquor a small can of French peas. Season with a little salt and pepper, and add a pinch of sugar. When the peas have absorbed all the liquor allow them to cool. Chop half a pound of English walnuts, and mix with the peas. Pour over them half a cup of mayonnaise. Serve with lettuce.

=Orange and Lettuce Salad.=--Two oranges peeled and freed from pith and pips and sliced in rounds to every three heads of well-washed lettuce (the latter should be torn, not cut into pieces of suitable size); allow half a small teaspoonful of finely minced shallot for every three heads of lettuce, and add a dressing composed of two tablespoonfuls of salad oil to one of tarragon or chilli vinegar; then add pepper and salt to taste, and serve.

=Russian Orange and Cucumber Salad.=--Allow a thinly sliced orange to each large cucumber, slice the latter; then mix, and use the dressing indicated in the foregoing recipe.

=Orange and Pear Salad.=--Take six sweet oranges and six pears, peel the oranges, free them from pith, quarter them, take out the pips without wasting the juice, and reserve any juice which has escaped; place them in a deep bowl; peel the pears thinly, cut each pear into six lengthwise pieces, core them, add them to the oranges; add the orange juice and a small sherry glassful of brandy, and leave in a cool place for an hour; then pour over them the contents of a sixpenny jar of orange syrup; cover the whole with whipped cream, but do not sweeten it; sprinkle the top thickly with chopped blanched almonds and pistachio-nuts, and serve at once. When pears are not to hand, grapes, or very ripe apples make a good substitute, but pears undoubtedly give the best result. When not to be served immediately this salad should be placed upon ice, or, failing this, stand it in a bowl of cold water until it is required.

=Picnic Salad.=--Another popular combination for salads consists of oranges and bananas, apples and celery, cut in slices and dressed.

=Pilgrim Salad.=--Peel and cut tomatoes in half-inch slices, cut out rounds from the centre of each with a sharp-pointed knife, and insert four or five cooked asparagus tips. Lay them on crisp lettuce leaves. Cut the centres of the tomatoes into cubes, and put these with several stoned olives on one side of each plate. Put half a cupful of olive oil into a pitcher, the strained juice of half a lemon, the strained juice of half an orange, one teaspoonful of grated onion pulp, a quarter of a teaspoonful of paprika, one teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce, a quarter of a teaspoonful of mustard, and one teaspoonful of finely chopped parsley. Shake until thick and creamy, and pour over the portions of salad.

=Pineapple and Grape-fruit Salad.=--Mix a cupful of chopped pineapple with a shredded grape-fruit, and half a cupful of nuts blanched and chopped, or celery. Add some preserved cherries, and serve on lettuce, with mayonnaise dressing.

=Plum Salad.=--Pare and stone some small plums, and fill the cavity in each with chopped nuts; arrange on a serving dish in circles of sliced bananas and on the top of each plum, and on each of the banana slices put a little whipped egg dressing. Serve immediately with a garnish of crisp cress.

=Salad à la Monte Carlo.=--Four ripe firm tomatoes, two truffles, half a pint of cooked asparagus points, six small artichoke bottoms cooked, two lettuces, mayonnaise dressing, krona pepper. Blanch and peel the tomatoes, and cut them into slices; cut the truffles into thin slices, and the artichoke bottoms into shreds; wash and trim the lettuces; mix all ingredients together in a basin, season with pepper and salt, and a very little vinegar and oil; dress the whole in a pyramidal form on a deep dish, or in a shallow salad bowl; garnish round the base with groups of asparagus points. Pour a little mayonnaise sauce seasoned with krona pepper over the whole, and serve a sauce-boat of this dressing with the salad.

=Salad à la Princesse.=--Make with green vegetables such as peas, asparagus tops, French beans, capers, and gherkins. The vegetables are mixed and seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, tarragon vinegar and chopped chervil, and served with a border of apple jelly, or of hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters. It can also be served in a salad bowl without any garnish.--C. HERMAN SEEN, How to Cook Vegetables.

=Salad Dressing.=--Put the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs into a basin, add one teaspoonful of caster sugar, one teaspoonful of mustard, one quarter of a teaspoonful of salt and pepper; mix well, and add (slowly stirring all the time) one quarter of a pint of cream and one tablespoonful of vinegar.

=Salads that Cost Nothing=, made of dandelions, sorrel, and nettles. The latter are very pleasant to the taste, and if the young shoots are steamed or boiled, can hardly be distinguished from spinach, also they have valuable medicinal qualities.

Then the young shoots of brambles form another constituent for a salad, as well as their fruit for jams and jellies, and with a small outlay of one penny and a little trouble you can grow a crop of nasturtiums. Not only will the flowers be useful for decorating your table, but you have an excellent vegetable. Nasturtium leaves will add a piquancy to your summer salads, and in the autumn you can pick some of the seeds and make a tasty pickle with them. Put them in salt and water for twenty-four hours, dry them, place them in a bottle, boil a teaspoonful of peppercorns in half a pint of vinegar, strain, and when cold pour on to the seeds and seal the bottle. The rest of the seeds you can leave to ripen in order to provide yourself with next year’s crop.

A salad bag is a good thing to keep lettuce crisp and fresh. Remove the outer leaves, spread the inner leaves and wash carefully, and hang to drip dry in a square of cheesecloth or white mosquito netting knotted together by its four corners. Suspend this from its own nail above a sink, or in the lower part of the refrigerator if preferred, though this adds little if anything to the crispness of the lettuce dried in a bag.

=Sheldon Salad.=--One can of pineapple, four oranges, two bananas, half a pound of Malaga grapes, and a quarter of a pound of candied cherries. Cut the pineapples into small squares, seed the oranges, and cut them up finely, seed the grapes, and cut them and the cherries in halves; slice the bananas very thin. Serve on lettuce leaves, and pour over the following sauce--the juice of the pineapple, one cup of sugar, one tablespoonful of cornflour, one cup of walnuts cut up finely, and a cup and a half of water. Mix the cornflour with a little of the water, and add the pineapple juice, sugar, and the remainder of the water. Boil until thick, and after it is cold add the nuts and glacé cherries. This salad may be put together and frozen.

=Stuffed Prunes, with Lettuce.=--Let choice prunes soak overnight in cold water. Steam until tender. Slit down one side, and remove the stone from each; grate cheese; add a little finely chopped red pepper or a dash of paprika, and enough mayonnaise dressing to mix the cheese to a soft smooth consistency. Fill the open space in the centre of each prune with the cheese mixture. Serve with toasted crackers and lettuce salad, over which French dressing has been poured.

=Tomato Salad.=--Cut six good ripe tomatoes into rather thick slices, place them in a salad bowl with finely chopped parsley, and chervil sprinkled over them; put two saltspoonfuls of salt into a tablespoon, cover well over with white pepper, pour in sufficient tarragon vinegar, to fill the spoon. Stir carefully with the fork until the salt and pepper are dissolved, and sprinkle carefully over the tomatoes; then add two or three tablespoonfuls of the best salad oil.

=Welsh Onion Salad.=--Peel and slice two large Welsh onions, and two cucumbers; put them on ice for twenty minutes, then drain and dry them on a cloth. Arrange the slices of onion and cucumber alternately on a dish, pour some mayonnaise over them, and serve.

Cucumbers should, if possible, always be kept on ice, and never be put into salted water.

=Winter Salad.=--Cut up three boiled potatoes, one head of celery, one boiled beetroot, add a few leaves of blanched chicory and one spoonful of chopped parsley. Prepare the following sauce and pour over it, mix well before serving:--

Take four tablespoonfuls of cream, one tablespoonful of vinegar, a little pepper, one teaspoonful of salt; stir all these ingredients well, and pour over the salad. The vinegar must be added drop by drop, or it will curdle the cream.

MISCELLANEOUS SAUCES.