Strip off the outer leaves, wash the lettuce, split it in half, and
lay it in cold water till dinner time. Then drain it and put it into a
salad dish. Have ready two eggs boiled hard, (which they will be in ten
minutes,) and laid in a basin of cold water for five minutes to prevent
the whites from turning blue. Cut them in half and lay them on the
lettuce.
Put the yolks of the eggs on a large plate, and with a wooden spoon
mash them smooth, mixing with them a table-spoonful of water, and two
table-spoonfuls of sweet oil. Then add, by degrees, a salt-spoonful
of salt, a tea-spoonful of mustard, and a tea-spoonful of powdered
loaf-sugar. When these are all smoothly united, add very gradually
three table-spoonfuls of vinegar. The lettuce having been cut up fine
on another plate, put it to the dressing, and mix it well.
If you have the dressing for salad made before dinner, put it into the
bottom of the salad dish; then (having cut it up) lay the salad upon
it, and let it rest till it is to be eaten, as stirring it will injure
it.
You may decorate the top of the salad with slices of red beet, and with
the hard white of the eggs cut into rings.
CELERY.--Scrape and wash it well, and let it lie in cold water till
shortly before it goes to table; then dry it in a cloth, trim it, and
split down the stalks almost to the bottom, leaving on a few green
leaves. Send it to table in a celery glass, and eat it with salt only;
or chop it fine, and make a salad dressing for it.
RADISHES.--To prepare radishes for eating, wash them and lay them in
clean cold water as soon as they are brought in. Shortly before they go
to table, scrape off the thin outside skin, trim the sharp end, cut off
the leaves at the top, leaving the stalks about an inch long, and put
them on a small dish. Eat them with salt.
Radishes should not be eaten the day after they are pulled, as they are
extremely unwholesome if not quite fresh.
The thick white radishes, after being scraped and trimmed, should be
split or cleft in four, half way down from the top.