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Summer Herb Salad
Sprinkle lettuce leaves with minced fresh marjoram, summer savory and fennel. Use French dressing into which an extra dab of prepared mustard has been beaten. COOKED SALADS, OR GREENS Greens are only salads cooked for the shortest possible time in the smallest possible quantity of water, usually only what clings to the leaves after washing them. Most of the varieties, too may be served with French dressing, and are good either hot or cold.
From field and wood come a whole array with fanciful names and health-giving properties. Lamb's-foot or plantain, lamb's-quarters or goosefoot, lamb's lettuce or corn salad; all the worts, about 150 varieties from adderwort to yellow-wort; shepherd's purse, sour knotweed, wild rocket, young woodbine leaves; jack-by-the-hedge and sauce-alone, both carrying their own garlic flavor; pigweed, greasewood, sour dock; Russian thistle and stinging nettle, both of which must be blanched before cooking to remove harshness and sting; milkweed which sends forth sprouts in the spring that resemble asparagus; that lawn pest dandelion, and the farmer's pest chickweed which can hardly be distinguished from spinach; broad-leaved sheep sorrel, and oxalis or wood sorrel; pokeweed, or poke salad, the pink new shoots only, which whole districts in the South live on in early spring, and now for sale to pot-likker dunking Dixie senators in Washington, D. C. markets for 2-bits a small bunch; and the tidy-tips prized by Californians. We can add to these all the young things of the garden, infant beet, turnip and carrot leaves; mustard, collards, kohlrabi, radish and horseradish leaves, nearly everything, in fact, if it is picked soon after it pokes its head out of the ground. (From Salads and Herbs, By the Browns.)
The salad itself is three lines of instruction; everything after it belongs to a general discussion of cooked greens. A few terms need translating before you start.
- French dressingIn an American book of this period this means a plain vinaigrette shaken from oil and vinegar, roughly three parts to one, with salt and pepper -- not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today. Whisk the mustard into the vinegar before adding the oil so it emulsifies.
- An extra dab of mustardPrepared mustard means a smooth jarred mustard, Dijon-style or plain yellow. About a teaspoon to a half cup of dressing is enough to thicken it and carry the herbs; more will bury the marjoram.
- Summer savoryStill sold fresh in summer at farm markets, but often absent from supermarkets. Fresh thyme is the closest substitute; use it a little sparingly, as its flavour is the more insistent of the two.
- FennelHere it is the feathery herb foliage, not the bulb. Mince the fronds finely; the tough stalks are not wanted.
- Quantities and yieldNone are given. For a head of lettuce serving four, a tablespoon each of minced marjoram and savory and a little more fennel frond suits most palates; taste as you go, since marjoram turns musty in quantity.
- Dress at the tableSoft lettuces collapse within minutes under an acidic dressing. Sprinkle the herbs over dry leaves, and add the dressing only as it goes out.
- On the wild greens listed alongsideThe catalogue that follows the recipe is descriptive, not a set of instructions, and several plants on it should not be treated as the passage suggests. Pokeweed is genuinely poisonous -- root, mature stems and leaves all contain saponins and phytolaccatoxin -- and the advice to cook greens for the shortest possible time must never be applied to it. Treat the whole list as period reading rather than a foraging guide, and consult a current authority before eating any wild plant.