[Sca-cooks] Re: Serving salads

[Louise Smithson]

> From: "Harris Mark.S-rsve60"
> <Mark.s.Harris at motorola.com>

> In Anne-Marie's recent list of period/period-like
> food items which could be picked up from the grocery
> store, she mentioned:
> "--green salad from a salad bar or in a bag, with a
> vineagrette dressing on the side" and that made me
> wonder just how salads were served in period.

> The meat was often sliced at the table by the
> server, not generaly by the guest or previously by
> the kitchen. So, I'm wondering if the same applies
> to salads. Again, I can see three possiblities:
> 1) topped? tossed? in the kitchen with the dressing
> 2) topped at the table by the server
> 3) topped at the table by the guest.
> 
> Do we know from feast or possibly salad descriptions
> how it was done? This may be in the salad-msg file
> in the Florilegium, but I haven't looked.

According to an Italian if you lived anywhere outside
of Italy Salad was prepared and dressed the wrong way.

On salads from Giacomo Castelvetro
Translation from “The fruit, herbs & vegetables of
Italy: an offering to Lucy Countess of Bedford. 
Giacomo Castelvetro, Gillian Riley.  1989 Viking, New
York, NY.  A copy of which was provided to me by
Johnnae Ilyn Lewis last year. 
The right way to make a good salad
Of all the salads we eat in the spring, the mixed
salad is the best and most wonderful of all.  Take
young leaves of mint, those of garden cress, basil,
lemon balm, the tips of salad burnet, tarragon, the
flowers and tenderest leaves of borage, the flowers of
swine cress, the young shoots of fennel, leaves of
rocket, of sorrel, rosemary flowers, some sweet
violets, and the tenderest leaves or the hearts of
lettuce.  When these precious herbs have been picked
clean and washed in several waters, and dried a little
with a clean linen cloth, they are dressed as usual,
with oil, salt and vinegar.
It takes more than good hers to make a good salad, for
success depends on how they are prepared. So, before
going any further, I think I should explain exactly
how to do this.
It is important to know how to wash your herbs, and
then how to season them.  Too many housewives and
foreign cooks get their greenstuff all ready to wash
and put it in a bucket of water, or some other pot,
and slosh it about a little, and then, instead of
taking it out with their hands, as they ought to do,
they tip the leaves and water out together, so that
all the sand and grit is poured out with them. 
Distinctly unpleasant to chew on…
So, you must first wash your hands, then put the
leaves in a bowl of water, and stir them round and
round, then lift them out carefully.  Do this at least
three or four times, until you can see that all the
sand and rubbish has fallen to the bottom of the pot. 

Next you must dry the salad properly and season it
correctly.  Some cooks put their badly washed, barely
shaken salad into a dish with the leaves still so
drenched with water that they will not take the oil,
which they should to taste right.  So I insist that
first you must shake your salad really well and then
dry it thoroughly with a clean linen cloth so that the
oil will adhere properly.  Then put it into a bowl in
which you have previously put some salt and stir them
together, and then add the oil with a generous hand,
and stir the salad again with clean fingers or a knife
and fork, which is more seemly, so that each leaf is
properly coated with oil.
Never do as the Germans and other uncouth nations do –
pile the badly washed leaves, neither shaken nor
dried, up in a mound like a pyramid, then throw on a
little salt, not much oil and far too much vinegar,
without even stirring.  And all this done to produce a
decorative effect, where we Italians would much rather
feast the palate than the eye.  
You English are even worse, after washing the salad
heaven knows how, you put the vinegar in the dish
first, and enough of that for a footbath for Morgante,
and serve it up, unstirred with neither oil nor salt,
which you are supposed to add at table.  By this time
some of the leaves are so saturated with vinegar that
they cannot take the oil, while the rest are quite
naked and fit only for chicken food.  
So to make a good salad the proper way, you should put
the oil in first of all, stir it into the sald, then
add the vinegar and stir again.  And if you do not
enjoy this, complain to me.
The secret of a good salad is plenty of salt, generous
oil and little vinegar, hence the Sacred law of
salads: 
Insalata ben salata, Poco aceta & ben oliata. : Salt
the salad quite a lot, Then generous oil put in the
pot, And vinegar but just a jot. 
And whosoever transgresses this benign commandment is
condemned never to enjoy a decent salad in their life,
a fate which I fear lies in store for most of the
inhabitants of this kingdom. 




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