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Salade Jardiniere
With peas, asparagus points and other green vegetables really green, beets blood red, and first-rate aspic jelly for border, and flowers, nothing goes to table that is more showy than this.
Cut a number of different colored root vegetables in slices and boil them till done in salted water-a white turnip, a yellow rutabaga, a red carrot, salsify, parsnip, broad celery stalks, almost anything for variety. When done stamp them all out in little star shapes or flower shapes, with a tin vegetable cutter, not much larger than a silver dime. Also stamp out a quantity of the same star shapes of cooked beets, the deepest red, and keep them ready in vinegar, separate.
Boil a corresponding proportion of asparagus heads green, also some green peas (unless you can get the French peas, and half a can may do), and string beans and chives, etc. A small quantity of the French ognons, or small seed onions sold in bottles, is also a desirable addition. Cut the string beans in diamond shapes.
Mix all these vegetables, except the beets and a sprinkling of the peas or asparagus points, together with enough oil and vinegar to moisten, and turn them from one bowl to another a few times.
Pile in the middle of the dishes, and pour thin mayonaise over, and scatter the star shapes of beets and the green peas all over the top. Around the edge of the dishes place blocks of amber jelly, lettuce leaves, tiny bunches of cress, flowers, etc., all or part, according to fancy. The jelly should be cooled in dishes, in depth about half an inch, cut in perfect cubes, then cut across, to form three-sided blocks. For all these ornamental purposes it is generally necessary to clarify the aspic jelly a second time-it makes it firmer and of a more golden richness of appearance. All things in this class are for style. Good workmanship tells. Better never attempt them at all than make them but tawdry imitations.