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The Hotel Book of Salads

`And light words spoken Only for something to say."

Whatever other matters may have been already written to death there is, it is plain to see, a great dearth of writers on the subject of salads, at least in our own language; it seems as if this had been regarded as a foreign affair and not of home interest at all. The things, consequently, that never have been written but ought to be would, if written, fill a very much larger volume than this is intended to be, and lest our title seem to promise too much it may be proper to say we are not going to try to take them all in. However, in the way of practical salad making, we will try to crowd into small space nearly everything that can be pressed into the hotel service, the herbs and fruits that are taken like some people's statements, cum grano salis, with many another "--rich herbaceous treat Might tempt a dying anchorite to eat." and enough of the ornamental for extra occasions. The daily bid of fare writer, whatever other office may be his, who, tired of repeating the three or four stock salads, sits running his fingers through his hair and wondering what in the nation be shall write next, will very likely find in the following lists just the suggestion he wants, for the very good reason that they have been prepared and adapted under extremely similar circumstances. We wish to offer a set of instructions valuable to hotel economists, to those who take pride in their table, perhaps to hotel working boys and girls who have their living to made, for common labor is plenty and object enough; it is skill that wins the good positions and good pay, but skill that can adapt itself, skill to do that which everyone else in the house may be deficient in, even sometimes to make brick without straw, to make salad sans oil, sans celery, sans chicken, sans everything that most people deem essential. But when it comes to the salad-making of the veritable gastronomer, the scientific epicure, the avowed dinner giving and dinner taking bon vivant, it is time for us hotel workers to lay down the pen and shut up--the book. Not that we think the best of our trade salads inferior, but because he is sure that his are and must be incomparably above them together a sufficient variety of materials for our salad-making, let us to work.