Salad goes with chicken as the piano goes with a song. To eat lettuce
with the cheese, as many Englishmen and not a few Americans do, is
preposterously absurd. As for putting sugar on lettuce I cannot write
down my opinion, for it is not fit for print. Salad cries for vinegar,
as a parched plant cries for rain.
Vinegar is not only agreeable to the senses of taste and smell, and
most refreshing, especially in summer, but it plays a very important
rôle in the digestion of food.
It has been said that God sent us our food and the devil our cooks.
This is not _always_ the case, but the devil certainly inspired the
man who taught that, in mixing a salad dressing, the vinegar should be
added by a miser.
This maxim, widely accepted, has done a great deal of harm, not only
in spoiling many millions of dishes for the palate, but in preventing
salads from heading off dyspepsia, with all its evil consequences.
Many physicians have deplored the insufficiency of fat in the average
American's diet. Fat is especially important as a source of energy, and
also because fat meat is more savory and appetizing than lean meat.
Furthermore, physiologists have shown by laboratory experiments that
the presence of fat in meat or vegetable dishes makes them yield a
larger degree of nutriment (apart from what it contributes itself).
Professor John C. Olsen of the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute says
that "fats and oils furnish fully half the energy obtained by human
beings from their food. Fats also exert a beneficial influence on the
digestive process, so that a diet without fat is dry and unpalatable."
The only drawback is that fat makes the food "rich" and difficult of
digestion--unless the cook is an artist.
This is why so many persons exclude it from their dietary, at the cost
of energy in men and the beauty of health in women.
It is here that salad comes to the rescue. The vinegar in it, if
genuine, excites by its fragrance and acidity the digestive glands not
only in the mouth and the stomach, but in the pancreas, which acts on
all the constituents of food, particularly the fats.
The pancreas is a gland near the stomach; it secretes the juice known
as pancreatic and pours it into the duodenum, or small intestine,
which--some ten or fifteen feet in length, is folded about it. To
prevent intestinal indigestion there must be an abundant flow of
pancreatic juice, and this flow is stimulated by the vinegar in the
salad we eat and other acids in our food.
On this point the greatest living authority on the subject, Professor
Pawlow, makes the following extremely important remarks:
... _an acid reaction is not only necessary for an efficient action
of the peptic ferment, but is at the same time the strongest excitant
of the pancreatic gland. It is even conceivable that the whole
digestion may depend upon the stimulating properties of acids, since
the pancreatic juice exerts a ferment action upon all the constituents
of the food. In this way acids may either assist digestion in the
stomach where too little gastric juice is present, or bring about
vicarious digestion by the pancreas where it is wholly absent. It is
easy, therefore, to understand why the Russian peasant enjoys his kwas
with bread. The enormous quantity of starch which he consumes, either
as bread or porridge, demands a greater activity upon the part of the
pancreatic gland, and this is directly brought about by the acid.
Further, in certain affections of the stomach, associated with loss of
appetite, we make use of acids, both from instinct as well as medical
direction, the explanation being that they excite an increased activity
of the pancreatic gland, and thus supplement the weak action of the
stomach. It appears to me that a knowledge of the special relations
of acids to the pancreas ought to be very useful in medicine, since
it brings the gland--a digestive organ at once so powerful and so
difficult of access--under the control of the physician._
It is obvious from these disclosures that if every American family
followed the French custom of eating a sour salad at least once a day
there would be very much less intestinal indigestion, which is even
more distressing than indigestion in the stomach.
It is further obvious that Fletcherizing, or "mouth work," _alone_ does
not avert indigestion, for saliva has no effect on fats. The pancreas
takes care of these, particularly if aided by acid ingredients in our
food.
Probably no detail of the French menu is therefore so important to us
as the daily sour salad.
An astonishingly small number of American families know what a
delicious and hygienically valuable dish salad is with a French
dressing of _good_ olive oil and _pure_, fragrant vinegar.
There is very little nourishment in salad leaves until the oil has been
added; and the oil is what we need, with the vinegar to help digest it.
The two words I have just italicized explain why so many Americans
imagine they do not like salads with vinegar and oil dressing. Unless
the oil is good and the vinegar pure and fragrant such a salad does no
good but may do much harm; and it is seldom that one can buy good oil
and vinegar in a grocery store.
Of all the food adulterators none are more rascally and abundant than
the makers of artificial vinegar. Pure vinegars made of cider, wine, or
malt can be sold at a very good profit to the manufacturer and dealer
at from ten to twenty cents a quart; but this profit does not satisfy
the swinish greed of the adulterators and unscrupulous grocers.
By using acetic acid, a by-product of the distillation of deadly
wool-alcohol, they can make "vinegar" at a cost of two cents a gallon,
or 90 cents a barrel, which retails at over $20.
The pure food law covers this case, but the fines inflicted are so
trifling compared with the gains, that the adulterators regard them in
the light of a joke and continue their profitable poisoning, though
many of them have been before the courts two, three, or four times.
Jail is what their crime calls for. This so-called vinegar is in most
cases injurious to the health of those who consume it, and by its lack
of agreeable fragrance it discourages the healthful practice of eating
sour salads.
It is foolish to get vinegar of the nearest corner grocer unless you
know he is honest. It is best to buy it in the sealed bottles of firms
which have a national or international reputation for fair dealing.
The same caution should be observed in purchasing olive oil. Do not buy
it of a grocer who exposes his bottles in the show window. If he does
not know that sunlight spoils the best olive oil, he is not likely to
know, or care, what the best oil is.
Among the adulterants used to cheapen olive oil small quantities of
castor oil, lard oil, fish oil, and even petroleum have been found.
More frequent are rapeseed and poppy-seed oil. Peanut oil is much used,
but the most frequent adulterant is cottonseed oil, which costs only
about one-fifth the price of high-grade olive oil and therefore offers
great temptation to the dealer.
Cottonseed oil is not inferior in nutritive value to olive oil, and Dr.
Wiley assures us that no objection can be made to it "from any hygienic
or dietetic point of view." Of the three million barrels of it produced
in this country every year, not less than two-thirds are consumed as
food. It is "perfectly satisfactory," the doctor adds, "to those who
have not acquired a taste for olive oil."
If you like cottonseed oil there is no reason in the world why you
should not pour it into your salad bowl. But if you wish to enjoy the
epicurean delights of true salads you must train your sense of smell
and learn to distinguish between fragrant oil and cottonseed oil,
which, at its worst, has a disagreeable flavor and at its best is
practically odorless and tasteless.
It is the fragrance, the Flavor, of olive oil that keeps it in the
market, boldly defying its cheap rivals.
A great many Americans who think they do not like olive oil know not
what real olive oil is. They have been fooled by the adulterators. They
may have been careful to buy bottles labeled "Pure Virgin Olive Oil";
but, as Dr. Wiley says, "this expression upon the label has been found
in many instances of olive oil highly adulterated and belonging to the
cheapest grade."
There are more than a dozen grades of olive oil. It varies with the
locality it is grown in, the care taken in its manufacture, the season,
and so on. The first pressing (virgin oil) is the best; the virgin oil
of the month of May is finer than any other, and the best oil comes
from Italy.
It is worth while to cultivate a "taste" for the finer kinds, for they
are the most fragrant and digestible. Such oil is not only a table
delicacy second to none, it is also used more and more by doctors for
diseases of the stomach and other parts of the digestive tract. For
gall stone it is almost a specific.
As a cosmetic, nothing equals olive oil. The beauty of Spanish and
Italian women is owing largely to their daily and liberal use of it in
salads and cooked foods. It improves the complexion and rounds out the
lines of the form.
Eating salad is by far the most agreeable way to take olive oil. There
are persons with whom all acids disagree; these unfortunates have to do
without the fragrant vinegar; but they can easily learn to like salads
with oil and salt alone. The taste is decidedly worth acquiring.
In making the dressing, oil should by all means be applied "by a
spendthrift." "Put on as much as you think you can afford," I feel
tempted to advise; but, of course, you can get the best results more
cheaply by painting each leaf with oil or by thoroughly mixing the
leaves with it before putting on the vinegar. Always make sure that
there is no water in the bowl and that the leaves are well dried.
In hot weather the vinegar should be put on first, to make the salad
more piquant and refreshing. One spoonful of vinegar (pure and
fragrant, if you please) to every two of oil is not too much. Let the
stirring be done "by a maniac," according to the old maxim, for it is
most important.
Salt is a necessary ingredient, and a trifle of cayenne makes the
salad more digestible. Black pepper is, to some epicures, an unwelcome
intruder, though it is often used even in Paris restaurants, where I
now find it necessary to add _sans poivre_ in ordering a salad. Once in
a while, for variety's sake, add a little mustard, or rub the inside
of the big bowl (it must be big, and Russian lacquer is the best) with
garlic. A few tablespoonfuls of meat gravy--particularly chicken
gravy (from roast or fricassee) give additional richness and savor to
the dressing.
If you can get no pure and fragrant vinegar, by all means use lemon
juice as infinitely better than "vinegar" made of acetic acid and
water. But if malt, wine or cider vinegar is at hand it is preferable
to the lemon, which does not harmonize so well with oil. Lemon is too
loud--too self-assertive--like a trombone added to a string quartet.
It is a subtle thing, this gastronomic instrumentation, and there are
differences of opinion as in matters musical. There is nothing better
than a glass of lemonade--except, perhaps, a glass of limeade;--in
very warm weather it is a luxury to suck a lemon like an orange. But
if a slice of lemon is put in my tea I lose the delicate aroma of the
leaves, which I am after; and so with salads. The fragrance of vinegar
is more delicate, and does not overpower the fragrance of the oil. On
the other hand, in making mayonnaise, which is also a French dressing,
having been invented by the Marshal de Richelieu, and which is often
used for green salads as well as for meat and fish salads, lemon is
perhaps preferable to vinegar. Apparently the addition of the yolks of
raw eggs to the other ingredients prevents the lemon tone from being
too loud. With sardines, also, a lemon is all right, because their own
flavor is not so weak as to be easily routed.
In remote regions, where pure olive oil cannot be obtained, a very fair
substitute for French salad dressing may be provided by following the
practice of Belgians and Germans of putting small cubes of fried bacon
into the vinegar. Sometimes the vinegar, thus oiled, is heated and then
poured over the leaves. That wilts them but makes a piquant dish for
a change. In one way or another, have a sour salad with your dinner,
especially if it includes fat food, for the reasons given.