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Salads

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.