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French Salad

It would be difficult to particularise a French salad. It is composed of everything or anything. Many improvised dishes of salad, such as beans, potatoes, cauliflower, and celery (cooked), are served at a French table, seasoned with salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, chopped tarragon, or a little tarragon vinegar. Fish salads, too, are highly relished, namely, the remains of any solid fish, such as cod, sole, or turbot, for which the following sauce will be found excellent, as it will be also for a lettuce or other vegetable salad. Bruise the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs with a wooden spoon, and moisten with a raw egg; put this egg-mixture into a bowl, with two salt-spoonfuls of salt, a little pepper, and a pinch of cayenne; add by degrees oil and vinegar, alternately, until the required quantity, three table-spoonfuls of oil and one of vinegar, which may be tarragon, has been mixed. Keep the sauce stirred and well smoothed with the spoon. Add half a tea-spoonful of shredded onion, and the same of chervil and tarragon, if plain vinegar has been used with the oil. Two table-spoonfuls of thick cream or melted butter will make the sauce richer and better, and the whites of eggs may be chopped and added to the salad.