Notable Salad Ideas.

Today I give you some final gleanings from our source of the week. I have decided to give you salad ideas today. The particular copy of A Thousand Notable Things that I am using was published in 1815, but the original version dates to the second half of the sixteenth century. There have been many editions over the centuries, but much of the original remained in the 1815 edition, including today’s first recipe.

Linseed, a rare salad.
Linseed put into the Roots of Radish, and by and by put fat or dunged earth, it will bring forth and herb like Dragons, whose taste will seem like Vinegar and Salt: therefore it is marvelously desired in sauces, for having this you need neither Vinegar nor Salt, as one that is chief of the King’s garden told me, saith Mizaldus.


To make Vinegar presently.
Take White or Rhenish Wine, and steep the slices of Beet Roots in it; suffer it to simmer over a gentle fire a little, then set it to cool, and in three hours it will be tolerable vinegar for use; and by soaking Beaten Grass in Strong White Wine Vinegar for twenty-four hours, then rolling it up in pellets, and drying them, you may have Vinegar at all times, for having these about you, dissolve one of them in a little Wine or Cyder, and it will become Vinegar.

To make a Salad grow up in two or three hours.
Take Lettuce and Spinage Seed, and soak them in Warm Oil the space of half an hour, then have Fat Earth in a Hot Bed to sow them in, covering them very lightly over with Mould, and they will spring up to admiration, and presently leaf.

Quotation for the Day.

Salad bars are like a restaurant's lungs. They soak up the impurities and bacteria in the environment, leaving you with much cleaner air to enjoy.
Doug Copland.