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Lettuce Salad

1. Keep the lettuces, after washing and trimming, in ice water till near dinner time. Shake the water from them and give them time to drain upside down. Dish the tender heart leaves only in shallow bowls, and sliced hard-boiled eggs on top.

The lettuce though cold and fresh should be dry, except for pieces of ice strewn over in warm weather. These bowls are to be set on the dinner tables. The freshest eggs may look bad when turned blue by too long boiling, but it is not certain that even long boiling will so discolor them if they be plunged immediately in the coldest water. Between the cooks, the pantrymen, the head waiter and the second steward it happens that the eggs on lettuce nearly always come out blue.

Boil eggs six minutes; pour off the hot water immediately and fill up with cold. 2. Cut lettuce in shreds like cold slaw, with a sharp knife, on a board kept for the purpose. Have some chopped eggs ready on a plate and a cupful of vinegar seasoned with pepper and salt in a pitcher.

Dish up only as ca<??>d for, some lettuce in a deep dish, the vinegar poured over, and eggs dredged on top. 3. Cut the lettuce first in shreds and then across, quite small. It will not do to chop it in a bowl as that blackens it.

Have a thin salad dressing in a pitcher separate, and a plate of the smallest heart leaves of lettuce at hand. Dish up as called for, the lettuce in the dish, dressing poured all over it and two or three leaves set in for garnish. One of the things that helps to lower the estimation people have of hotel tables is the way they have in some houses, where they take an interest in nothing but calm stagnation, of making lettuce salads hours before they are wanted and dishing them black-looking, wilted and warm. It ruins lettuce to let it lie in vinegar long.