To make a really good salad - the poem-in-a-picture kind - takes the eye of an artist in selection, the niggardliness of a miser with vinegar, the wisdom of a counselor with salt, and the extravagance of a spendthrift with oil.

- Old Recipe.

NO one knows how many centuries salads have been a favorite form of food; probably ever since the ancients discovered that olives would yield their rich, nutritious oil. And rightly so, for the green, uncooked vegetable furnishes the mineral salts, the valuable vitamins, and the bulk so much needed; the oil supplies fuel-and-energy food; and the acid of the vinegar, or of the delicately perfumed lemon, aids digestion. More and more the American people are learning that salads should appear on the table every day in the year. Perhaps the reason that they are not as generally served as they deserve to be is due to the too common use of inferior oils. While there is much nutriment in peanut oil and in cotton-seed oil, neither can be compared with pure olive oil in flavor and digestibility.

In making salads, everything should be crisp and cold both at the time of making and of serving. Greens should always be washed in cold water, and dried by vigorous swinging in a wire basket, or by pressing lightly between a clean folded towel. The salad should be kept on ice as long as possible, and the dressing should not be added until the moment of serving. Mayonnaise dressing is perhaps more generally used with meats than any other. Lettuce and other leaf salads are usually considered better with French dressing.

Mayonnaise Dressing

Yolk of 1 egg 1 cup oil

1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon paprika

2 tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice

Beat the egg yolk and add all the seasonings including the vinegar. Add the oil, a teaspoon at a time, and beat after each addition, using either a Dover egg-beater or a wire whip. If the dressing should curdle add a little more vinegar or lemon juice; or another egg yolk may be beaten in a clean bowl and then the curdled mixture beaten into it, a teaspoon at a time. The egg white may be beaten and added to thin the dressing instead of cream.

Salads with mayonnaise dressing are especially adapted for meals in which there is no regular meat course. Salad with French dressing is better with a meal having a meat course and a rich dessert.

Colored Mayonnaise

To color Mayonnaise green add one tablespoon of ravigote herbs to the finished dressing; or chop parsley leaves very fine; pound them in a small quantity of lemon juice; strain and add the juice to the dressing.

To color Mayonnaise red rub one scant tablespoon of lobster coral through a fine sieve and add it to the dressing.

White Mayonnaise

To make white Mayonnaise follow the ordinary directions, using lemon juice instead of vinegar, omitting the paprika and adding, when finished, a half cup of whipped cream or half an egg white beaten very stiff.