Salads, Sandwiches, and Relishes

Salad Vegetables

Celery, cucumbers, lettuce, radishes. To prepare the uncooked vegetables for salad, pick over, discard bruised portions, look out for insects, wash each stalk thoroughly, drain, and pile in order on a wet towel. Tie, and lay on the ice or where they will be cold; they will keep crisp for several days. Do not scrape celery until ready for the table. Pare cucumbers and let them stand in ice water half an hour. Or, pare, but slice just before serving. Put the whole pared cucumber on a shallow dish, cut in very thin and even slices, but keep them together as if whole, and pour French dressing over them. Or let each person dress them to their own liking. Arrange lettuce in a deep bowl, large dark leaves outside, and so on, with the light colored and small ones in center, as if half opened. Celery looks best in an upright glass with its delicate tips opening up like a flower. The poorer stalks may be cut in three inch lengths. With radishes, cut skin in petal-like divisions.

Tomato Salad

Scald and peel large ripe tomatoes, cut in halves or slices, and serve very cold; to be dressed to taste. Or, scoop out the centers, making cups to be filled with the scooped-out portion, mixed with dice of cucumber, celery, sweet pepper, or nuts and cheese, and dressed. Or, cut the firm pulp from the bottom to the stem in petal-shaped strips, turn them partly back like an opened tulip, and serve in a lettuce cup. Use any dressing you prefer, from your own estimate of sugar, salt, pepper, and lemon; on through the French, the boiled, and the sour cream dressings to the rich mayonnaise. They are all good, and blend perfectly with the tomato. When fresh tomatoes are not at hand, use canned.

Potato Salad

Scrub small new potatoes, or the smallest of older potatoes of the waxy variety. Boil them until tender, but not so long that they break easily. Peel while hot, dice, and mix with an equal amount of diced cucumber. Dress with a little oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and onion juice, and let stand for fifteen minutes. Then, mix with a boiled or bottled salad dressing, turn into a dish lined with lettuce, sprinkle with parsley, and serve.

Lettuce with Plain Cream Dressing

Pile the largest leaves not suitable for decorating, and slice into shreds with a sharp knife. Toss in a bowl, and sprinkle with salt, powdered sugar, cream, and lemon juice. Serve at once.

Cabbage Salad

This is one of the daintiest of winter salads. Shave the cabbage on a slaw cutter in a pan of very cold water; let it soak for one hour, then press it dry, put it in a towel, and wring it dry. Heap in the salad bowl; at serving time at the table, dust it first with a teaspoon of salt, then a little pepper. Sprinkle over a little mint sauce and six tablespoons of olive oil. With a fork and spoon, toss thoroughly until every part of the cabbage is covered with seasoning and oil. Add last two tablespoons of tarragon vinegar, mix thoroughly, and serve.

Chicken Salad

Allow about equal parts of cold boiled chicken or fowl, cut in small cubes, and celery cut in thin slices. Blend with a little mayonnaise dressing, make it into a mound on a plater, cover with mayonnaise (or boiled cream dressing if you do not care for oil), garnish with celery tips, capers, or minced parsley, or with a broder of alternating slices of tomato and cucumber. Do not use tomato and beet together in any salad.

Mayonnaise

If you have no "mixer" you can make a perfect dressing in the following manner:

Beat two raw egg yolks; add one-half teaspoon salt and one-half teaspoon paprika and beat again. Add four tablespoons acid, a little at a time (the acid may be vinegar or lemon juice or a mix of both). Add one tablespoon olive oil, put in an egg beater and beat oil in thoroughly. Add oil about one teaspoon at a time for several times, then in larger quantities, beating vigorously, up to a pint of oil in the two eggs. Vigorous and long beating is absolutely necessary in order to avoid the danger of mayonnaise separating or curdling.

To improve mayonnaise: To one-half cup of mayonnaise salad dressing, add one heaping teaspoon of peanut butter, thoroughly mixed in a small quantity at a time. It gives a richer flavor.

Dressing for Cold Slaw (Red Cabbage)

Mix one rounded tablespoon sugar, one-half level teaspoon each salt and mustard, one-fourth level teaspoon pepper, and one level teaspoon flour. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a saucepan, stir in the dry mixture, and add gradually one-half cup hot vinegar. When thick and smooth, add quickly one beaten egg; cook a moment longer, and pour it hot into one pint shaved red cabbage and serve at once, hot or cold. Use this dressing also for any mixed salad of cold vegetables.

French Dressing

Mix at the table in a small cup or bowl with a lip, one-four level teaspoon salt, a few shakes of paprika or white pepper, three tablespoons olive oil or high-quality cottonseed oil, and one tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar. Stir until the vinegar blends with the oil, and pour it over the salad. If mustard or onion juice is desired, add it with the salt. Use this to season or marinate fish and meat salads before adding the richer dressings, and also on most of the simple dinner salads. The same materials added one at a time are never as smooth as when made into an emulsion as above.

Fruit and Nut Salads

1. Mix one cup each of freshly sliced apple and celery, and one-half cup crumbled pecans or walnuts. Dress with cooked or mayonnaise dressing and serve with lettuce; garnish with one-fourth of a red unpared apple, cut in thin crescent-like slices.


2. Mix equal parts of orange pulp, diced banana, pineapple, and peeled Malaga grapes. Serve in lettuce cups with French or sweet dressing.


3. Serve halved peeled peaches with slivers of sweet almond and whipped cream flavored with lemon and sugar in a nest of lettuce.


4. Serve sweet juicy pears sliced, with sliced ginger and sour cream dressing.


5. Combine oranges with boiled chestnuts and bananas, or cherries with strawberries and pineapple; or serve either alone with French dressing.

Cheese Salad

Mix cream cheese with chopped nuts and minced parsley. Make into balls, and serve in nest made of shredded lettuce. Or, fill the hollow parts of celery stalks with cream cheese mixed with chopped nuts, a dash of onion or sweet pepper, and moistened with a little mayonnaise. Heap it high in about two to three inches of the stalk. Or, pass grated Edam or other dry cheese with a plain lettuce salad, as there may be some who would not eat the lettuce with cheese.

Date Sandwich

Wash dates in tepid water. Dry, remove stones, scales, and the inner skin near the stone if it is tough. Add an equal amount of finely chopped walnuts, and moisten with soft butter or cream until it can be spread on slices of bread. Cover, press together, and cut into triangles. Combine figs and pecans, or raisins and almonds in the same way.

Egg Sandwich

Mince hard-boiled eggs very fine, and mix with minced olives, cress, or parsley. Moisten with softened butter or mayonnaise, season to taste, and spread between sliced bread. Or combine yolks with an equal amount of potted ham.

Cream Cheese Sandwiches

Cut thin rounds of rye bread. Add enough rich cream to cream cheese to enable it to be whipped to a spreadable consistency, and add enough English mustard to make a nice golden color and nice flavor. Spread inch thick on the bread, and grate over it a quarter of an inch of cold boiled ham. Place a few shreds of olives over this, and serve very cold and fresh. Double cream whipped very dry and stiff may be used instead of the cream cheese.

Peanut and Olive Sandwiches

One-half box peanut butter, one dozen olives, stoned and minced. Season with lemon juice and salt.

Fried Sandwiches

Beat one egg, add one cup of milk. Dip in it six or seven sandwiches made with grated cheese between buttered bread. Press slices firmly, brown them in butter on each side.

Canapes

These are small portions of bread covered with simple or compound mixtures of fish, meat, eggs, cheese, etc; well-seasoned, and served as a first course to tempt the jaded appetite.

Cut either qhite, graham, rye, or brown bread in one-fourth inch slices, and then in oblongs, triangles, rings, circles, crescents, or diamonds. Butter and brown in the oven, or saute or fry in deep fat. Cover with any of the following combinations, and arrange on individual plates on a doily or large shallow dish, slightly overlapping, in any attractive combination of color and shape. The following are some acceptable combinations:

1. Equal portions of mashed sardines and hard-boiled egg yolks, seasoned with lemon juice; pile in center of bread with minced whites around it, and lay slivers of pickle across diagonally.


2. Spread with French mustard, grated cheese, and a thin slice of pimola or a border of chopped green pepper.


3. Creamed butter, minced watercress, lemon juice, and minced lobster or crab; topped with a layer of caviar or anchovy paste.


4. Minced ham or tongue, made into paste, with creamed butter and mustard. Garnish with minced olives, pickles, or sliced cucumbers.

Egg Relish

Bruise a clove of garlic and rub the inside of the frying pan with it. Then put in two large tablespoons of butter, and when it is hot, pour in five eggs beaten until mixed, with a quarter of a teaspoon of salt, two dashes of pepper, and a little celery salt or nutmeg. Stir rapidly until the eggs are like a thick custard, then heap on hot toast rounds buttered and spread with anchovy or sardine paste.

Philadelphia Relish

Mix two cups shredded cabbage, two green peppers shredded or finely chopped, one teaspoon of celery seed, one-fourth teaspoon mustard seed, one-half teaspoon of salt, one-fourth cup brown sugar, and one-fourth cup vinegar.