To Season Salads And Dressings

The following herbs, except capers, may easily be grown in the home garden. For directions for cultivating them, see Bailey's "Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture."

Capers: Used as a garnish for meat and fish salads, mixed with the salad itself, or chopped and added with other chopped seasonings to mayonnaise dressing. Capers are the buds of a shrub which is cultivated in European countries bordering the Mediterranean; they are generally pickled in vinegar and sold in small bottles.

Chervil: Chopped like parsley, sprinkled over endive or fish salads, or used to make chervil vinegar.

Chives: Chopped and sprinkled over potato or meat salads, or added to salad dressings. They are a small plant of the onion family and grow wild in many parts of the country. Cultivated chives may sometimes be bought growing in flat wooden boxes; they are slender onion-like leaves.

Garlic: The bulb or "clove" is sometimes used to rub the bottom of the salad bowl, but more frequently to prepare a chapon for green salads. A chapon is a thin piece of bread crust, about 1 inch wide and 2 inches long, sprinkled with salt and rubbed with a crushed clove of garlic. It is placed in the bottom of the salad bowl before the salad is put in, and remains during the mixing, but is removed before the salad is served.

Nasturtium: The flowers are used as a garnish; the leaves and young buds are chopped to give flavor. Sometimes young seeds are chopped and added to mayonnaise dressing with other chopped seasonings.

Onion: The cut side of an onion may be rubbed over the bowl before the salad is put in to give a slight onion flavor to a green salad. Oil for dressings to be used with vegetables, meat, or fish is sometimes flavored by allowing a slice of onion or a little onion pulp to lie in it for a few hours; onion juice may be added to the dressing itself if desired.

Parsley: Chopped fine and used with other chopped seasonings in both French and Mayonnaise dressings.

Sage: Chopped and used with meat salads.

Spearmint: Chopped and sprinkled over cold lamb salad; or used for flavoring vinegar to be served with lamb salad.

Sweet basil: Used with fish and shell-fish.

Tarragon: Chopped and sprinkled over salads, or used to make tarragon vinegar. Tarragon has a delicate flavor resembling that of anise.

Seasons For Salad Greens

Spring: Lettuce (curly, Boston head, or Romaine varieties), water cress, upland or winter cress (charlock), black or white mustard, peppergrass, wild chives, young radish and turnip tops, sorrel, blanched dandelions, corn-salad (lamb's salad or fetticus), blanched wild chicory (succory).

Summer: Lettuce, water cress, sorrel, cabbage, nasturtium stems and young buds, endive (late summer).

Autumn: Lettuce, sorrel, endive, cabbage, celery.

Winter: Lettuce, French endive (witloof chicory), endive, cabbage, celery.