A SALAD is a dish composed of certain herbs or vegetables seasoned with salt and pepper, oil and vinegar, or some other acid element.

The term salad is also applied to certain cold dishes composed of cold meats, fish, etc., seasoned like a salad, and combined with salads.

You also speak of an orange salad when the fruit is cut into slices and seasoned in sweetened alcohol.

As an aliment, salads vary greatly in nutritious quality, according to their composition and constituent elements. The leaf salads, like lettuce, endive, sorrel, etc., contain little but water and mineral salts.

Of all the methods of seasoning a salad proper, the simple, so-called French dressing is the most delicate, the most worthy of the gourmet's palate, and the most hygienic. 5

Let it be remarked that a salad may be made a constant element in the alimentary regime; that it is an agreeable, amusing, and healthy thing to eat; that it is an economical and democratic dish, and not a dish merely for the fashionable world. Incidentally let it be remarked that the fashionable world enjoys no privileges in the art of cooking, except so far as concerns certain quintessential sauces which can only be made in elaborately mounted kitchens and at considerable expense. Indeed, as a rule the fashionable world fares badly, more especially in America, where the services of a "caterer" are so largely used. The very name of "ca-terer "has something gross and crude about it which shocks the real gourmet. A man or a woman who invites you to dine is responsible for your health and happiness as long as the hospitality lasts and even afterwards. But how few hosts have a right sense of the respect which they owe to their guests. How absolutely hard-hearted, uncharitable, and egoistic is the host or hostess who conceives a dinner-party merely as an occasion for show and ostentation, has his or her table set out with flowers and silver and crystal, and orders a "caterer," a purveyor of food, to serve a dinner at so much a head. What a crude state of civilization this condition of things implies!

But, to return from this digression, let us consider, first of all, salads of uncooked vegetables and herbs. Such salads are made of lettuce - either cabbage or cos lettuce, which latter the French call Romaine, and which is the most delicate - endive, corn-salad - this is a species of Valeriana or rather valerianella locusta, called by the French Mache - chicory, both wild and curly, sorrel, celery, garden and water-cresses, little white radishes called in French raiponce, beet-root, tomatoes, cucumbers.

To give flavor to salads, you use the small and fine herbs that are in season, such as chervil, chives, tarragon, pimpernel, balm, mint, etc. In the spring all or some of these seasoning herbs above mentioned may be combined and eaten as a salad by themselves. Such a salad bears the name of Vendome.

The vegetables and herbs that are to be used uncooked must have been specially cultivated for the purpose; that is to say, they must have been grown rapidly, abundantly watered, and properly bleached during growth.

These conditions are necessary to render the leaves crisp and tender, A salad that re-quires powerful and prolonged mastication is a nuisance, and to eat it is waste of time. Unless a lettuce is so tender that it seems to melt coolly in your mouth, you may just as well eat a cabbage salad. The cultivation of vegetables and herbs for salads is a special branch of market-gardening requiring constant care in watering, forcing, and bleaching the plants, and in regulating their ripening in such succession that there may be salads ready for market each day, neither un-dergrown nor overgrown, but just mature, juicy, and tender. Salads left to grow by themselves in an ordinary kitchen-garden are usually tough and stringy; the watering has been insufficient; the sun has scorched the epidermis of the leaves ; the rain has splashed the soil up into the heart of the plant; the fibre is dry and woody. The gardener who cultivates for the kitchen must tend his plants with extreme care, in order to grow them satisfactorily from the point of view of the cook and of the gourmet.

Having obtained a fine cos lettuce, we will say for an example, how are we to make it into a salad? First of all, strip off and throw away the outer leaves, which are too green and tough, and which are often bruised and dirty. Then take your lettuce, cut it into four quarters, beginning at the base; take off the larger leaves one by one until you reach the heart; carefully wash each leaf and drain the whole. A spherical wire basket is useful for draining a salad; you put the leaves in the basket and swing it violently to and fro, and so shake the water out. Get your leaves as dry as possible; even wipe them with a towel after having shaken them in the wire basket - the reason being that whenever there is any water left on the leaves the dressing will not get distributed. The lettuce having been well washed and dried, you arrange the leaves loosely in the salad-bowl, which should be large and roomy, say about one and a half times the volume of the mass of the salad, in order that you may have plenty of room to turn it during the seasoning process. On the top of the salad you lay a handful of seasoning herbs, chervil and chives and a sprig of tarragon. In this state the salad is served if it is to be seasoned at table; in any case the salad must not be seasoned until a few minutes before it is eaten, with the reserve to be made further on.

Now we come to the operation of seasoning and mixing. The tools needed are a salad-spoon and fork, and the best are the simplest and the cleanest, namely, a spoon and fork of boxwood. Beware of the dreadful inventions of artistic silversmiths. In table-service it often happens that the highest luxury is the extremest simplicity. First of all, you take up with your fingers as much of the seasoning herbs as you think fit, and with a knife cut them up finely over the salad-bowl; then you take your salad-spoon and put into it salt and pepper in sufficient quantity; then you pour a little vinegar into the spoon and stir the salt and pepper with the fork until the salt dissolves and the pepper gets well mixed with the vinegar ; then you sprinkle this mixture over your salad and turn it with the spoon and fork in order to distribute the seasoned vinegar and the chopped herbs as thoroughly as possible over every leaf; finally, you measure out so many spoonfuls of oil and turn your salad again and again until the oil is fairly distributed over every leaf. The salad is then ready to be eaten.