ON SALAD.
In 1664, if my memory serves me rightly, John Evelyn wrote a treatise
“On Salets,” in a small volume, which I possess in my library; but I
cannot, at this moment, lay my hand on the little book. Though curious
in a certain sense, the treatise would be found more useful for the
horticulturist than for the cook. Salads are now, as in Evelyn’s day,
composed of certain pot-herbs, to which are added various aromatical
odoriferous herbs, or _fournitures_ (that is the term of art in French
cookery), which greatly add to the zest of the mixture. There are
about twelve of these _herbes de fourniture_, as they are called,
namely, garden-cress, water-cress, chervil, chives, scallions or green
onions, tarragon, pimpernel or burnet, parsley pert, hartshorn, sweet
basil, purslain, fennel, and young balsam. Cresses are wholesome and
anti-scorbutic, chervil is a purifier, chives a stimulant, tarragon
stomachic and corroborant, while parsley is carminative, and the
remaining herbs are all pronounced by Lémery in his “Traité des
Aliments,” to have medicinal virtues. Salads, of course, vary according
to the season. _Chicorée_ or endive, is in season at the end of autumn,
and it is not usual to add any _herbe de fourniture_ to that salad.
Some, in France, place at the bottom of the salad-basin containing an
endive salad, a small crust of stale bread rubbed over with garlic,
which gives a slight flavour to the dish. Later in the season, another
species of _chicorée_, called _scarole_, is had recourse to. It is
not so tender as chicory or succory, but has as much flavour, and
is quite as wholesome. Chicory or succory is, according to Lémery,
of a moistening and cooling nature, and creates an appetite. Winter
salads are generally composed of _mâche_ or corn salad, rampions
(which, according to Lémery, “fortify the stomach, help digestion, are
detersive, and agree with every age and constitution”), and chopped
celery. Sometimes, also, in winter, a salad is made exclusively of
chopped celery, seasoned with oil and mustard.
Garden or water-cress is also a winter salad. It is good to mix it with
slices of beetroot; and in France, more especially in Provence, olives
are often added. Towards February, the salad most in vogue is an endive
called _barbe de Capucin_, or Capucin’s beard. It is seasoned like the
white succory.
The lettuce, known in England for more than three centuries, generally
appears about the commencement of Lent, but the better sort of lettuce
does not make its appearance before Easter. It is the most popular of
all salads, and possesses soothing properties. _Herbes de fourniture_
are added to it, with which anchovies and chopped chives are mixed.
Sometimes, to vary the dish, prawns and shrimps are likewise thrown in.
Next comes the Roman lettuce, less watery, and with much fuller and
finer flavour than the preceding, especially when the leaves are
streaked. The Roman lettuce is sometimes served with odoriferous herbs,
but hard eggs are rarely added to the seasoning. Roman lettuce is in
season from May to the end of Autumn.
Besides these, there are hotch-potch salads, made _en Macedoine_, with
a variety of roots and vegetables, such as French beans, _haricots
blancs_, lentils, small onions, beetroot, saxifrage, or goat’s beard
(called in French, _salsifis_), potatoes, carrots, artichoke-bottoms,
asparagus-tops, gherkins, sliced anchovies, soused tunny, olives,
truffles, &c.
There are salads also of meat, fish, and game. A _salade à l’italienne_
is composed of cold fowl cut up in pieces, and served with anchovies
and dressed salad. Sometimes this salad is made with a cold partridge;
and very relishing it is.
I insert here Carème’s receipt for a _salade de poulets à la Reine_.
It will be seen that, like all his receipts, it would be somewhat
costly:--“Dress in a _poële_, or roast four fine chickens, and when
cold cut them in pieces, as for a _fricassée_; lay the pieces in a
basin, with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, whole parsley washed, a small
onion sliced, or a shalot, and cover with a round piece of paper;
leave them in this seasoning for some hours; boil eight eggs of the
same size hard, and take off the shells; wash six fine lettuces; half
an hour before serving, drain the fowl upon a napkin, separating the
small pieces of parsley and onions, take the leaves from the lettuces,
preserving the hearts very small, cut the leaves small, season them
as a salad usually is, and turn them into the dish; lay upon them in
a circle the eight thighs of the fowls, in the centre put the wings,
upon the top of the thighs lay the rumps and two of the breasts only,
surmount these with the fillets, laying one the smooth side upwards,
and the next the contrary way, or upside down (as four are taken from
the left, and four from the right side), on these lay the two other
breasts; be careful to keep this _entrée_ very neat and very upright;
make a border of eggs cut in eight pieces, and between each quarter
place upright small hearts of lettuces, each heart cut in four or even
six pieces; place half an egg, in which fix upright a heart of lettuce,
and place it on the summit of the salad; then mix in a basin a good
pinch of chervil and some tarragon leaves, both being chopped and
blanched, with salt, pepper, oil, ravigote vinegar, and a spoonful of
aspic jelly, chopped small; the whole well mingled, pour it over the
salad and serve immediately.”
The vinegar used in salads should always be wine vinegar, not
pyroligneous acid.
Chaptal, the great chymist, and afterwards Minister of the Interior,
in France, has given a receipt for dressing salad. He directs that the
salad should be saturated with oil, and seasoned with salt and pepper,
before the vinegar is added. It results from this process that there
never can be too much vinegar, for, from the specific gravity of the
vinegar compared with 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.
There are also salads of lemons, oranges, pomegranates, pears, apples,
&c.; but these will be more properly spoken of under the head Dessert.
The following receipt for a winter salad is from the pen of one of
the wittiest men, and one of the purest writers of England of this
generation, the late Sydney Smith:--
“Two large potatos, passed through kitchen sieve,
Unwonted softness to the salad give.
Of mordent mustard add a single spoon;
Distrust the condiment which bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt.
Three times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And once with vinegar procured from town.
True flavour needs it, and your poet begs,
The pounded yellow of two well-boiled eggs.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, scarce suspected, animate the whole;
And lastly, on the flavoured compound toss
A magic teaspoon of anchovy sauce.
Then, though green turtle fail, though venison’s tough,
And ham and turkey are not boiled enough,
Serenely full the Epicure may say,--
Fate cannot harm me--I have dined to-day!”
The Spanish proverb says, that to make a perfect salad, there should
be a miser for oil, a spendthrift for vinegar, a wise man for salt,
and a madcap to stir the ingredients up and mix them well together.
The proverb is perfect with the exception of the last member of the
sentence. A patient and discreet man, a painstaking and careful man or
woman should be entrusted with the duty of mixing the salad with its
seasoning.
The French say, “Il faut bien fatiguer la salade.” It is said by a
dramatic writer,
“Toute française à ce que j’imagine,
Sait bien ou mal faire un peu de cuisine;”
and the same may be said of every Frenchman. Some of the emigrants,
who fled to England and other countries between 1790 and 1804, gained
their livelihood by giving lessons in cookery; and Brillat Savarin
tells us, in one of his chapters, that when in emigration at Boston, in
America, he taught the _restaurateur_ Julien to make _œufs brouilles
au fromage_. Captain Collet, also, he tells, made a great deal of money
at New York in 1794 and 1795, in making ices and _sorbets_. In my
earlier days there were two Frenchmen in London who made good incomes
by dressing salads, and each of them kept his cabriolet. One took as a
fee 10_s._ 6_d._, but the other charged a guinea.
In an article, headed “Industrie gastronomique des Emigrés,” Brillat
Savarin thus speaks of a famous salad-dresser:--
“In passing through Cologne I met a Breton gentleman who made a good
thing of it by becoming a _traiteur_. I might multiply examples of
this kind to an indefinite extent, but I prefer relating, as more
singular, the history of a Frenchman who acquired a fortune in London
by his cleverness in making a salad. He was a Limousin, and, if my
memory serve me rightly, called himself d’Aubignac, or d’Albignac.
Though his means were very small subsequent to his emigration, he
happened to dine one day at one of the most famous taverns of London.
Whilst he was in the act of finishing a slice of juicy roast beef,
five or six young men of the first families were regaling themselves
at a neighbouring table. One among them stood up, and, addressing the
Frenchman in a polite tone, said, ‘Sir, it is a general opinion that
your nation excels in the art of making a salad, would you have the
goodness to favour us by mixing one for us?’ D’Albignac, after some
hesitation, consented, asked for the necessary materials, and having
taken pains to mix a perfect salad, had the good fortune to succeed.
While the salad was in process of mixing, he candidly answered all
questions addressed to him on his situation and prospects; stated he
was an emigrant, and confessed, not without a slight blush, that he
received pecuniary aid from the British government. It was this avowal,
doubtless, which induced one of the young men to slip into his hand
a five-pound note, which, _after a slight resistance_, he accepted.
He gave the young man his address, and some time afterwards was not
a little surprised to receive a letter, in which he was asked in the
politest terms to come and dress a salad in one of the best houses in
Grosvenor Square. D’Albignac, who began to have a distant glimmering of
durable advantage, did not hesitate an instant, and arrived punctually,
fortified with some new ingredients destined to add new relish to his
mixture. He had the good fortune to succeed a second time, and received
on this occasion such a sum as he could not have refused without
injuring himself in more ways than one.
“This second success made more noise than the first, so that the
reputation of the emigrant quickly extended. He soon became known as
the fashionable salad-maker; and in a country so much led by fashion,
all that was elegant in the capital of the three kingdoms would have
a salad made by him. D’Albignac, like a man of sense, profited by his
popularity. He soon sported a vehicle, in order the more readily to
transport him from place to place, together with a livery servant
carrying in a mahogany case everything necessary, such as differently
perfumed vinegars, oils with or without the taste of fruit, soy,
caviare, truffles, anchovies, ketchup gravy, some yolks of eggs.
Subsequently he caused similar cases to be manufactured, which he
furnished and sold by hundreds. By degrees the salad-dresser realised a
fortune of 80,000 francs, with which he ultimately returned to France.”
Three centuries ago, we learn from Champier, who wrote in 1560, that
many materials were used for salads which are not thought of now; among
others, fennel, marshmallow-tops, hops, wild marjoram, elder-flowers,
and a species of nettle. Tomatas and asparagus were also at this period
used as salads.
In a “Mémoire pour faire un Ecriteau pour un Banquet,” published in the
sixteenth century, I find in the list of salads the following:--
1. Salade blanche.
2. Salade verte.
3. Salade de citron.
4. Salade d’entremets.
5. Salade de grenade.
6. Salade de Houblon.
7. Salade de laitues.
8. Salade d’olives.
9. Salade de perce-pierre.
10. Salade de poires de bon crétien.
11. Salade de pourpier confit.
We know better in our day than to make a salad of asparagus. Dr.
Roques thus speaks of asparagus in his “Observations sur les Plantes
usuelles”:--“The asparagus grows naturally in the woods, in the hedges,
in the sea-sand, and on the banks of rivers. The ancients knew and
cultivated asparagus. Athenæus speaks of field and mountain asparagus;
he says the best are those which grow naturally, without being sown.
Martial, Pliny, and Juvenal also speak of asparagus. The Romans
especially esteemed those of Ravenna. Nature, says Pliny, wished that
asparagus should grow wild so that they might be gathered every where
by everyone; but being improved by cultivation, the blades astonish by
their thickness. They are sold at Ravenna at three to the pound.”
In Covent Garden Market, in the season, it is very common to find
asparagus so fat that six weigh a pound.
Why is Dr. Roques so silent as to the velocity with which this
vegetable may be cooked? Quicker than asparagus is boiled, became
a proverb among the Romans.[22] Juvenal mentions a large lobster
surrounded with asparagus, and promises, in the eleventh satire to his
friend Perseus, a plate of mountain asparagus, which had been freshly
gathered by his farmer’s wife.
“Montani
Asparagi, posito quos legit villica fuso.”
I remember having read somewhere of a gentleman travelling near the
town of Arras (where Robespierre was born), and meeting a countryman
who insisted on supping with him. Entering an inn, the gentleman
asked for an _omelette_ and some asparagus. After having helped the
rustic to his half-share of the _omelette_, the stupid lout asked what
were the asparagus. “Oh!” replied the host, “they are a very fine
vegetable, and you shall have half of the bunch, as you have had half
of the _omelette_.” Thereupon the intelligent gourmand transferred to
his neighbour’s plate the ends, or as the late Mr. Justice Creswell
quaintly, yet forcibly used to say it, the handle of the esculent, who
thought these _quisquiliæ_ tougher to chew than the stalky part of the
cabbage.
The Marquis de Cussy tells us that no less a personage than Napoleon
ate the _haricots de soissons_, or kidney-beans with oil, as a salad.
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