ead and
butter sound very untempting. The best dinner salad will perhaps always
be white, crisp lettuce, with a simple French dressing, although, to
those acquainted with it, escarole runs it hard, with its cool, watery
ribs and crisp leaves. Elaborate salads, or those dressed with
mayonnaise, are too heavy to form the latter part of an already
sufficiently nourishing meal, but for luncheons and suppers the rich
salad is invaluable.

Salad which is to be eaten with game or to form a course at dinner may
be a crisp white cabbage lettuce, water-cress, Romaine lettuce, or that
most delicious form of endive, escarole.

The dressing should be the simple French dressing, about which so much
has been written and said, and which is so easy that perhaps it is one
reason why so few make it well. There is nothing to remember beyond the
proportions, and so many keep the quantity of oil, vinegar, and pepper
and salt in mind, but the manner of using them seems of no consequence;
but it is of so much consequence, if you do not want the vinegar on the
leaves and the oil at the bottom of the salad bowl, that, well known as
the formula is, I am going over it again with a few details that may
help to fix the matter in mind.

In the first place it must be remembered that a wet leaf will repel oil,
therefore the lettuce or other salad must be well dried before it is
sent to table. This is best done by swinging it in a salad basket, and
then spreading it between two cloths for a few minutes. Now it must be
quite evident, if a leaf wet with water will refuse to retain oil, that
one wet with vinegar will do the same; for this reason the leaves should
be covered with oil _before_ the vinegar is added, or the salad will be
crude and very unlike what it should be if properly mixed in the
following way:

Take lettuce as the example, although any of those mentioned are made in
the same way. Have the lettuce dry in the salad bowl, put in the
salad-spoon a saltspoonful of salt, a quarter one of pepper, and,
holding it over the bowl, fill the spoon with oil; mix the salt and
pepper well with it, and turn it over the salad; toss the salad lightly
over and over till the leaves glisten, then add two (if for epicures,
three or four) more spoonfuls of oil, then toss again over and over till
every leaf is well coated with oil; then sprinkle in a saladspoonful of
sharp vinegar. Toss again, and the salad is ready.

One salad less well known than it dese