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Chives and Shallots

Chives and shallots are dainty little members of the onion family, much used as a flavoring principle for soups, salads, sauces and ragouts, the essential oil of the shallot is the least strong of any of these liliaceous plants. It is quite impossible to make a good sauce piquante without it. Chives are diminutive and mild, their thin, small, hollow leaves being a most agreeable addition to salads. They are hardy perennials, and will do well in any common garden soil. Planted in small clumps they grow rapidly, and increase so as to render division necessary. They are sold by the root. Dill has a warm pungent taste that enters most pleasantly into gravies, but is particularly good pickled with cucumbers. Dill pickles, served very tender and ice cold, are called in Italian mossice. The variety designated as lemon thyme is the best for dressing, it is a valuable condiment and so is sweet basil, which plays a principal part in soups, stews and all highly seasoned dishes, especially of fish and venison. A small bed planted out to sweet basil is very fragrant and well repays the slight trouble it involves. To the category of the garnishing herbs belong garden and water cress, tarragon, chervil, small basil, purslane, heartlets of fennel, young balm mint and chives, and for the unfamiliar ones, I would substitute nasturtium blossoms, parsley mint and dill. Even an ordinary dish is more appetizing sent to the table with a light embellishment. The sorrel for pickles, curries and soups; sweet marjaram, a most delicate condiment, Rosemary, extensively in use in Italy for most kinds of fish and meats; corriander, whose seeds are put into many liquors, curries and in confectionery, and sage, whose leaves are really indispensible for stuffing roast goose or pork, veal, or for cooking with eels.