Part 18

Cut cold-boiled potatoes into tender slices and mix with them two raw white onions, minced, and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and two tablespoonfuls of salad oil mixed with a dessertspoonful of vinegar. Toss and turn, and put into a salad bowl. Set in the ice for two hours. Just before sending to the table stir into the salad a half cupful of mayonnaise, and pour the rest of the dressing over the top of the salad.

Potato salad (No. 2)

Peel eight potatoes that have been boiled in their skins and allowed to cool. Slice the potatoes into a bowl and add to them a chopped onion, which has been scalded after it was minced. Season the potato and onion with salt and pepper to taste. Pour upon them five tablespoonfuls of oil and two of vinegar. Toss up well and let them stand an hour before serving.

Cauliflower salad

Cut a young cauliflower into clusters, boil tender, drain and lay in the ice until very cold. Arrange on leaves of lettuce and serve with mayonnaise dressing. A delicious salad.

Beet salad

Boil eight young beets tender; drain, and lay in iced water until thoroughly chilled. Drain once more and scrape off the skins. Pour into a bowl six tablespoonfuls of salad oil with one tablespoonful of vinegar, and stir into them two saltspoonfuls, each, of salt and pepper. Stir this dressing thoroughly. With a sharp knife cut the chilled beets into tiny dice of uniform size, and as you do so drop these dice into the French dressing in the bowl. When all the beets are cut, turn them over and over in the dressing that they may become well coated. Set the bowl and its contents on the ice for an hour, or until very cold. Line a chilled salad bowl with crisp lettuce leaves. Drain all the dressing from the beets into a small glass bowl. Upon each lettuce leaf put a spoonful of the beet dice. When serving, put a spoonful of dressing upon each leaf.

A macedoine salad

One cup of green peas, boiled and cold, and the same of string beans cut into half-inch lengths, well cooked and suffered to get cold. One cup of celery cut into inch-lengths. One-half cup of boiled carrots, cut into tiny dice, also cold. One cup of red beets boiled and cut into small dice. Leave all these ingredients in the ice-box until chilled and stiff. Have ready a chilled glass or silver bowl—a shallow one is best; heap the beets in the center, arrange next to them a ring of celery dice, then the beans, next the carrots, lastly the peas—all forming a mound. Pour over this a good French dressing, garnish with a wreath of nasturtium blooms about the base and set on the ice until needed. Pass, if you like, a mayonnaise dressing with it. The true salad lover will, however, prefer the French dressing alone. It is a beautiful salad and easily made. If you can not get celery in summer, substitute boiled corn cut from the cob to make the white ring.

A fruit salad

Pare four juicy, sweet oranges, peel off every bit of the white inner skin from the fruit it incloses, pull the lobes apart, and cut each into four pieces.

Scald a cupful of English walnut kernels, strip away the bitter skin and let the kernels get dry and cold. Mix with the bits of orange, set on the ice for an hour, heap in a glass salad dish lined with crisp lettuce and cover with a good mayonnaise dressing.

Some consider a tablespoonful of celery cut into small pieces an improvement to this dish.

Apple and nut salad

Scoop the inside from fine, smooth, tart apples, and fill them with a mixture of cut-up celery and walnut meats, blanched and chopped, the whole well moistened with mayonnaise. Slices of pippins are sometimes mixed with watercress and covered with French dressing, making a piquante salad that is especially good with roast duck.

Apple and celery salad

Cut enough crisp celery into small bits to make a cupful. Lay in iced water. Peel and cut four large apples into small dice, dropping these into water as you do so. Drain the celery and sprinkle it with salt. Drain the apples, mix with the celery, and pour over all a thick mayonnaise dressing. Serve very cold.

Orange salad

Peel and divide the oranges into lobes, then cut each of these into three pieces. Have ready four tablespoonfuls of blanched English walnut kernels, cold and firm, for the same number of oranges. In serving, put a leaf of lettuce upon each plate, a great spoonful of the cut oranges upon the leaf and on this last a spoonful of nut-meats. Pour a good mayonnaise over all.

Bean and beet salad

Boil a half cupful of small kidney beans. There should be a cupful when cooked. Cook until soft a pint of tender string beans, cut into inch-lengths. Boil tender four large, or six small red beets. Let all get stone-cold. Cut the beets, then, into tiny dice. In the center of a glass dish heap the beets, next the white beans, and, as an outer circle, the green. Edge with white “heart” lettuce leaves, and pour a French dressing over all.

A pretty and palatable salad.

If you use dried white beans they must be soaked for six hours before boiling.

Nasturtium salad

Cut fine the heart of a large bunch of celery, mince a tablespoonful of parsley and six blades of chives. Mix with a French dressing, stir in lightly the petals of a dozen large nasturtium blossoms; line a salad bowl with crisp lettuce, and put this mixture in the center. Garnish elaborately with nasturtium leaves and blossoms.

Dandelion salad

Pick the young tender leaves of the dandelion, wash and lay in ice water for half an hour. Drain, shake dry and pat still drier between the folds of a napkin. Turn into a chilled bowl, cover with a French dressing, toss the greens over and over in this and send at once to table.

This is very wholesome—and palatable—to those that like it!

Cabbage salad

Shred a small white cabbage very fine. Heat a gill of vinegar, add to it a tablespoonful of butter, a tablespoonful of sugar, and a dash of celery salt and white pepper. Bring to a boil, stir in the shredded cabbage, and stir until very hot. Have ready a half cupful of milk, in which a pinch of soda has been dissolved, and stir it slowly into three beaten eggs. Boil until it is like thick cream. Pour this mixture over the hot cabbage, mix well together, season to taste, and turn into a chilled bowl. Bury in the ice until very cold.

Cold slaw

Shred a white cabbage fine. Heat a cup of milk. Heat, also, a gill of vinegar, and when this last is boiling, stir into it a tablespoonful, each, of butter and sugar, a teaspoonful of celery essence, two saltspoonfuls of salt and one of pepper. When boiling hard, stir in the shredded cabbage, and as soon as this is really hot, remove it from the fire. Pour the scalding milk slowly upon two beaten eggs and cook, stirring steadily until thick, then pour upon the cabbage and toss until well mixed. Set in the ice for two hours. Serve very cold.

Cucumber salad

Select small, firm cucumbers of uniform size. Wash well in cold water. Dry thoroughly. Make two incisions in the top of the cucumber about an inch from each end and about one-half inch deep. Next cut lengthwise from one incision to the other carefully and remove the top. Scoop out the pulp and mix with salt. Then chop some celery fine (if celery is out of season substitute cabbage), and some blanched walnut meats, also chopped. After the cucumber pulp has stood about an hour in the salt drain off the water and add the celery and the nuts. Mix thoroughly with a French dressing, and about twenty minutes before serving fill up the shells, placing a piece of parsley in each end.

Cucumbers with lemon juice

Lay fresh cucumbers in the ice for twelve hours. Peel and slice very thin, and send immediately to the table covered with crushed ice. As you dish them put some of the ice on each plate and pour over the cucumbers a dressing made of two parts of salad oil and one part of lemon juice, with salt and paprika to taste.

Daisy salad

Cut two-inch rounds of cream or Neufchâtel cheese one-half inch in thickness, and place on crisp lettuce leaves. Put the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs through the vegetable-press and place a teaspoonful of this yellow powder in the center of each round. Serve mayonnaise or French dressing in a separate bowl.

Tongue salad

Make a good French dressing. Dip into it firm, crisp lettuce leaves. Have ready cold boiled tongue, cut as thin as writing paper. Lay a slice upon each leaf, and serve with heated and buttered crackers. You can substitute ham for the tongue.

Tomato aspic

Soak a half-box of gelatine in a half-pint of water for an hour. Bring to a boil the liquor drained from a quart can of tomatoes, and add to it a teaspoonful of onion juice, two teaspoonfuls of sugar, a bay leaf and a teaspoonful of minced parsley, with pepper and salt to taste. Simmer for twenty minutes, add the gelatine, stir until dissolved, and strain through flannel into a jelly mold. Serve when firm, garnished with lettuce and pour over all a mayonnaise dressing. This jelly—in culinary phrase, “aspic”—lends itself agreeably to many combinations of salad, being susceptible of countless variations.

Tomatoes with whipped cream

Carefully peel and halve ripe tomatoes and lay them on the ice for several hours. Transfer to a chilled platter, sprinkle with salt, garnish with lettuce leaves and put a great spoonful of whipped cream upon each tomato half.

Tomato and corn salad

Pour boiling water over large, smooth tomatoes to loosen the skins, and set on ice. When perfectly cold, gouge out the center of each tomato with a spoon, and fill the cavity with boiled corn cut from the cob and left to get perfectly cold; then mix with mayonnaise dressing. Arrange the tomatoes on a chilled platter lined with lettuce, and leave on ice until wanted. Pass more mayonnaise with the salad.

Tomato and peanut salad

Prepare the tomatoes as in the last recipe. Have ready a pint or more of roasted peanut meats, blanched by pouring boiling water over them, then skinned, and when cold pounded finely and mixed with mayonnaise dressing. Fill the tomatoes with this. Serve on lettuce leaves.

Iced tomato salad

(Contributed)

Cook a quart of raw tomatoes soft, strain and season with nutmeg, sugar, paprika, a pinch of grated lemon peel and salt. Freeze until firm; put a spoonful upon a crisp lettuce leaf in each plate, cover with mayonnaise and serve immediately. It is still prettier if you can freeze it in round apple-shaped molds.

Canned tomatoes may be used if you have not fresh.

Clam salad

(Contributed)

Remove the skins and black heads of cold clams. Marinade for ten minutes in a French dressing and serve on a bed of shredded lettuce.

Pear salad

(Contributed)

Peel and slice five sweet, ripe pears, sprinkle with fine sugar, and add a little maraschino or ginger syrup. Serve with a little cream. Or pare and slice enough ripe, sweet pears to make one pint; add one-half cupful of blanched and chopped almonds, one-fourth of a cupful of powdered sugar and the strained juice of two lemons. Serve in a cup of lettuce leaves made by placing together the stem end of two lettuce leaves taken from the inside of a head of lettuce.

Hot potato salad

(Contributed)

Put into a frying-pan one-fourth of a pound of bacon, cut into dice; when light brown take out and sauté in the fat a small onion cut fine. Add one-half as much vinegar as fat, a few grains of salt and cayenne and one-half as much hot stock as vinegar. Have ready the potatoes boiled in skins. Remove the skins and slice hot into the frying-pan enough to take up the liquid. Add the diced bacon, toss together and serve.

Asparagus and shrimp salad

(Contributed)

To one cupful of shrimps add two cupfuls of cold cooked asparagus tips, and toss lightly together. Season with salt and pepper. Make a dressing of the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs, rubbed through a sieve, and sufficient oil and vinegar to make the consistency of cream, using twice as much oil as vinegar. Pour over the asparagus and shrimps.

Asparagus salad

(Contributed)

Asparagus tips heaped on lettuce leaves and served with French, mayonnaise or boiled dressing, poured over all, make a very good salad.

Endive salad

(Contributed)

Use the well-blanched leaves only. Wipe these with a damp cloth. Pour over this a French dressing and serve with roasted game.

Sweetbreads and cucumber salad

(Contributed)

Marinate one pair of sweetbreads in French dressing. Chill thoroughly. Drain and mix with equal parts of sliced cucumber; cover with French dressing into which has been stirred whipped cream.

Spinach salad

(Contributed)

Select the young, tender leaves from the center of the stock; wash carefully, drain and chill and serve with French dressing.

Lenten salad

(Contributed)

Line the bottom of the salad-dish with crisp lettuce leaves. Fill the center of the dish with cold boiled or baked fish, cut into pieces, and pour over it a pint of mayonnaise dressing. Garnish with rings of hard-boiled eggs.

Apple and cress salad

(Contributed)

Pare and cut into small pieces four medium-sized apples. Pour over this a French dressing. Pick carefully the leaves from a bunch of cress. Arrange around the outside of the salad-dish and heap the apples in the center of the dish.

Strawberry salad

(Contributed)

Choose the heart from a nice head of lettuce, putting the stems together to form a cup. Put a few strawberries in the center and cover with powdered sugar and one teaspoonful of mayonnaise dressing.

Banana salad

(Contributed)

Sliced bananas, served in the same manner as the strawberries in the above recipe, make an excellent salad.

Veal salad

(Contributed)

Use equal parts of well-cooked cold veal cut into small pieces, and finely-chopped white cabbage. Marinate the veal for two hours. Drain and mix with the cabbage. Season with salt and pepper, and a little chopped pickle, and cover with mayonnaise dressing.

Cherry salad

(Contributed)

Stone a pint of large cherries, being careful not to bruise the fruit. Place a hazelnut in each cherry to preserve the form. Chill thoroughly, arrange in a salad dish on lettuce leaves and pour over all a cream mayonnaise dressing.

Peach salad

(Contributed)

Pare a quart of ripe yellow peaches, and cut into thin slices; slice very thin a half cupful of blanched almonds. Mix the fruit and nuts with two-thirds of a cupful of mayonnaise, to which has been added one-third of a cupful of whipped cream. Serve immediately on lettuce leaves.

Ham salad

(Contributed)

Mix equal portions of minced, well-cooked ham and English walnuts or almonds. Serve with mayonnaise on lettuce leaves.

Sweetbreads with celery salad

(Contributed)

Wash the sweetbreads thoroughly and let them stand in cold water half an hour. Boil in salted water twenty minutes and then put in cold water again for a few minutes, to harden. To one cupful of minced sweetbreads add one cupful of diced celery and one-half cupful of chopped nuts. Cover well with mayonnaise dressing to which some whipped cream has been added.

Green bean salad

(Contributed)

Select fresh string beans and boil until tender in salted water. Or use a good quality of canned string beans. Arrange on a dish and serve with mayonnaise dressing.

Pea salad

(Contributed)

Drain and press through a sieve a can of green peas. Dissolve one box of gelatine in one-fourth of a cup of cold water and stir over a hot fire until heated. Take from the fire and add one-fourth teaspoonful of onion juice, one-half teaspoonful of salt, and a dash of pepper. Serve very cold with the following dressing: Put into a double boiler the yolks of two eggs, two tablespoonfuls of stock and two tablespoonfuls of oil. Stir until thick, take from the fire and add slowly one tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar, one chopped olive and two teaspoonfuls of chopped parsley.

Nut salad

Blanch almond kernels, and when cold and crisp shred into shavings. Mix with these an equal quantity of English walnuts, broken into bits, and pecan kernels. Stir a good mayonnaise dressing into the mixture and heap within curled lettuce leaves.

LUNCHEON FRUITS, COOKED AND RAW

Stewed rhubarb

Select only good, firm stalks, and reject those that are withered. Lay them in cold water for an hour, and cut into half-inch pieces. Put them over the fire in a porcelain-lined saucepan and strew each layer plentifully with sugar. Pour in enough water to cover all, and bring very slowly to a boil. Let the rhubarb stew gently until it is very tender, then remove from the fire. When cold, serve with plain cake.

Rhubarb and raisins

For every cupful of raw rhubarb cut into inch lengths add a third as much of raisins seeded and cut in half. Cook until soft, as directed in last recipe.

Rhubarb and dates

Stone a quarter of a pound of dates, cover with hot water, and cook five minutes. Add three cupfuls of raw rhubarb, cut into inch lengths, and cook, closely covered, until the rhubarb is tender. Sweeten to taste and set aside to cool in a covered bowl, after which set on ice until needed.

Rhubarb and figs

Soak a quarter-pound of figs in warm water for two hours. Cut into small pieces and cook as previously directed with three cups of raw rhubarb, cut into inch lengths, until the rhubarb is tender. Eat cold.

This dish is cooling to the blood, gently laxative and pleasing to the taste.

Stewed gooseberries

Remove the tops and stems from one quart of gooseberries, wash and drain. Put them into a saucepan with barely enough boiling water to cover them. Let them stew until tender. Dissolve one cupful of sugar in one-half cupful of water and boil to a syrup, then mix it with the fruit and set away to cool.

Agate-nickel-steel ware is altogether the best in the market for stewing acid fruits. They should never be cooked in tin or in iron, and unless copper has just been cleaned with vinegar to remove all suspicion of verdigris, the use of it is dangerous. I can not say too much of the ware I have named. It is easily kept clean, durable and safe.

Hot green apple sauce

Utilize in this way early windfalls and unripe summer apples, proverbially dear to the heart of the small boy and harmful to his digestive organs.

Pare and slice thin with a silver knife or with a fruit-knife of Swedish bronze. The crude acid forms an instant and unpleasant combination with steel. As you slice, drop into cold water to keep the color. Cook in an agate-nickel-steel saucepan, with just enough boiling water to keep the apples from burning to the bottom. Fit on a close lid and do not open the pan for half an hour, lest the steam escape. Shake up, and sidewise, every ten minutes to insure uniform steaming. When the half-hour is up open the saucepan, and if the apples are soft rub quickly through a colander of the same ware with the saucepan. Beat in sugar to taste, also a lump of butter—about a tablespoonful to a quart of the stewed fruit; turn into a covered bowl and serve hot. Pass thin graham bread and butter with it.

It is wholesome, anti-bilious and palatable.

Cold apple sauce

Make in the same way of ripe, tart apples, a seasoning with mace or nutmeg to taste. When it has cooled set on ice until wanted.

Stewed apples

Pare and core a dozen tart, juicy apples. Put them into a saucepan with just enough cold water to cover them. Cook slowly until they are tender and clear. Then remove the apples to a bowl, and cover to keep hot; put the juice into a saucepan with a cupful of sugar, and boil for half an hour. Season with mace or nutmeg. Pour hot over the apples and set away covered until cold. Eat with cream.

Baked sweet apples

Wash and core, but do not pare them. Arrange in a deep pudding-dish; put a teaspoonful of sugar and the tiniest imaginable bit of salt into the cavities left by coring; pour in a half cupful of water for a large dishful of apples; cover closely and bake in a good oven forty minutes or until soft.

Eat ice-cold, with cream and sugar.

Stewed prunes

Wash dried prunes and soak them for at least five hours in cold water. Put them into a saucepan with enough water to cover them and simmer very gently for twenty minutes. Now add sufficient granulated sugar to sweeten liberally, and simmer until the prunes are tender. Take from the fire and set aside to cool. Eat with plain cake.

Steamed prunes

Soak as directed above. Place them in a covered roaster and steam steadily for two hours. Make a syrup in a separate vessel with the water left from the soaking. This recipe is especially suited to those who desire but little sugar in prunes, as but little sweetness can be added to the prunes in steaming.

Never boil prunes, as the flavor is thereby injured. When cooked as directed, if the syrup is not heavy enough to suit, remove the prunes from the syrup and boil the syrup down to the required consistency.

Stewed prunelles and sultanas

Prunelles are more than subacid, and need the modifying influence of sweeter fruits. Allow equal parts of prunelles and of the small sultana raisins. Wash the fruit in tepid water, and soak it in enough cold water to cover it for several hours, on the back of the range. Draw them forward where they will simmer gently until soft. Add sugar to taste, let the syrup boil up once, then set away to cool.

Dried apples and peaches

The prejudice against the dried apple of commerce is pronounced, and founded upon traditions we should have outlived. The kiln-dried fruit of to-day is a respectable edible and capable of excellent results. It is especially good if mixed with equal parts of dried peaches, soaked for three hours in just enough tepid water to cover the fruit (having been first washed); then put over the fire with the water in which they were soaked, and simmer tender. Rub through a colander, add sugar, cinnamon and cloves to taste, and let the mixture get perfectly cold.

Stewed cherries

None of our small fruits are more injured by transportation than these same luscious and ruddy lobes. If you must buy cherries which are brought from a distance and are, of necessity, several days old, cook them if you regard the welfare of the digestive organs of your family. The verse that tells us “cherries are ripe” would be more reassuring if it also informed us that they were recently picked.

Wash and pick over carefully; put over the fire in a “safe” saucepan, such as I have already indicated, with just enough water to prevent burning, cover closely and stew until soft, but not broken. Strain off the liquor; set aside the cherries in a covered bowl, add three tablespoonfuls of sugar to each pint of the juice, return to the fire; boil fast for half an hour and pour over the fruit. Keep covered until cold.

Raw cherries

To be eaten at their raw best they should be kept in the ice-box until needed. Then they may be served with their stems still on in a glass bowl with fragments of ice scattered among them.

Sugared cherries

Use large, firm cherries for this dish. Have in front of you a soup-plate containing the whites of three eggs mixed with five tablespoonfuls of cold water, another plate filled with sifted powdered sugar at your right, the bowl of cherries at your left. Dip each cherry in the water and white of egg, turn it over and over in the sugar and lay on a chilled platter to dry. When all are done sift more powdered sugar over the fruit and arrange carefully on a glass dish.

Glacé cherries