The Etiquette of Gilded Age Salads

Due to the diversity of salads available in Western or European dining, salad forks were rather late to the table as a proper implement for dining. The first known “salad” fork was created in 1885. Prior to that time, salads were eaten with regular table forks, which had very little differentiation of tines. Lettuce knives or “salad knives” arrived on dining tables after 1926.
Above— Three different sterling salad forks, with distinctly different tines, all designed to pick up several different sizes, shapes and textures comprising a salad. The Towle Empire pattern salad fork has gilded tines, making it even more beautiful and more functional.

The term salad is applied to certain cold dishes composed either of meats, fish or vegetables. For generations, these have been served with a mixture of oil and vinegar, or oil, egg and vinegar. The oil furnishes the fatty matter for the meal, and being purely vegetable is more wholesome than the ordinary animal fats. 

Butter and cream are wholesome if taken unheated, but to make salad dressing, the butter is usually melted; hence its digestibility is destroyed, and under such circumstances a salad is robbed of its mission.

In these latter days many American cooks make a mixture of fruit, sugar and alcohol, and serve them as “salads.” These are not salads; are heavy, rather unwholesome, and will never take the place of a salad. I much prefer to call them fruit cocktails, and serve them as first course at luncheon or a twelve o'clock breakfast; or a dessert, and serve them with the ices at the close of the meal. 

Fruits mixed with mayonnaise dressing, and served as a salad are unsightly, unpalatable and a little nauseating. One cannot think of anything more out of keeping than white grapes in a thick mayonnaise. The simple so called French dressing is delicate and most worthy of recommendation. Over lettuce, cress or celery it certainly makes a palatable and wholesome dinner salad, and one in which children can be freely indulged. Such fruits as apples, pears, cherries, and pineapples, mixed with celery or lettuce, with French dressing, make an agreeable dinner salad.

A salad, simple in its construction, should be seen on every well regulated table three hundred and sixty-five times a year. Persons living in the country or on the outskirts of towns can, without cost, always pick sorrel, long dock, dandelions, and lambs’ quarters. In the city, one can, for a few pennies, buy sufficient greens for a dainty salad. 

If you cannot afford salad and dessert, choose the former by all means. The happiest closing to a real good dinner is a crisp salad well dressed, served with a bit of cheese and bread and butter or toasted cracker.

Left-over green vegetables, as beans, peas, carrots, turnips, may be used separately or mixed, dressed with French dressing, and served as a dinner salad. When you are cooking vegetables to-day for dinner, cook double the quantity, saving a portion to serve cold for to-morrow’s salad. Asparagus is much better cold than hot. Cold boiled cauliflower, carefully cooked spinach, leeks, beets, may all take their place in this delightful dish.

The Romans and Greeks used salads at the beginning of their dinner to create an appetite. In later days, however, salads are served at the end of the heavy portion of the dinner, or with the game, to bring back or sharpen the flagging appetite to the greater enjoyment of the final sweet.

The green vegetables contain the salts necessary to the well being of our blood, and oil is an important and essential food. The garlic and vinegar aid in the digestion and assimilation of other foods. In the use of garlic we must be most temperate. Rub the bottom of the bowl, or the bowl of the salad spoon. 

Bits of garlic throughout the salad are most unpleasant. Better use decided flavorings, in the form of flavored or scented vinegars. Put a few cloves of garlic into your vinegar cruet; into another, a little celery seed, or chervil; a mixture of these vinegars, or alternate use, will give variety and agreeable flavor. 

Tarragon vinegar is commonly used with mayonnaise dressing, sauce tartare, sauce Bearnaise and rich dressings of this character. Any small, fine greens that are in season, such as chives, mint, or chervil, may be finely minced and sprinkled over the dinner lettuce.

Standing at the very head of salad vegetables is the cos, or Romaine lettuce, and the ordinary delicate head lettuce, and corn salad, endive, chicory, sorrel, celery, garden and water cress, tomatoes and cucumbers. In the early spring the young tender dandelion leaves mixed with lettuce and a little carefully cooked beet root make a delightful dinner salad. Radishes, tomatoes and turnips are frequently used chopped fine, sprinkled over lettuce. 

Cauliflower, string beans, delicate shelled beans and peas, all add to the dinner salad. In the winter, cabbage and celery furnish us our daily salads. Nothing can be more delicate and delightful than the crisp, carefully cut, hard portion of a well bleached head of cabbage.

A spherical wire basket, known as a salad shaker, or drainer, is used to dry the salad materials after they have been thoroughly washed. The leaves of very curly lettuce frequently hold the water, even after shaking. Dry them with a soft piece of cheesecloth. If not dry, the dressing will not be evenly distributed.

Salads are digested largely in the small intestine. The oil contributes to the heat of the body; the small amount of vinegar aids in the digestion of other materials. —Sarah Tyson Rorer, 1898

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