Ingredients: One table-spoonful of vinegar, three table-spoonfuls of
olive-oil, one salt-spoonful of pepper, one salt-spoonful of salt, one
even tea-spoonful of onion scraped fine. Many use tarragon vinegar, _i.
e._, vinegar in which tarragon has been soaked.
Pour the oil, mixed with the pepper and salt, over the salad; mix them
together; then add the vinegar and mix again. Chaptal says: “It results,
from this process, that there can never be too much vinegar: from the
specific gravity of the vinegar compared with the oil, what is more than
needful will fall to the bottom of the salad-bowl. The salt should not
be dissolved in the vinegar, but in the oil, by which means it is more
equally distributed through the salad.”
This is the usual mode of mixing the salad; but I prefer to mix the
pepper and salt, then add the oil and onion, and then the vinegar; and,
when well mingled, to pour the mixture over the salad, or place the
salad over it, and mix all together. It seems to me to be more evenly
distributed in this manner.
Many different combinations can be made to suit the fancy, from the list
of salad materials. I will give certain combinations oftenest seen. It
must be remembered that salad is never good unless perfectly fresh. It
should not be mixed, or brought into the dining-room, until the moment
when it is to be eaten.
When preparing lettuce salad, choose the crisp, tender, centre leaves of
head lettuce. The kind seen in England and France, called _romaine_, is
now much used in New York; it is very crisp and tender. The seeds of
this lettuce can be obtained in New York. In the East, tarragon, and
endive also, are largely produced, and used to imitate these foreign
salads. The tarragon leaves are chopped fine, and mixed in the French
dressing (without onion) to use with lettuce. The taste for tarragon is
generally an acquired one: I prefer the tarragon vinegar to the fresh
leaves, as it has only a slight flavor of the plant.