Mrs. Grundy. (Tracy City, Tenn.) 1903-1930, 1905-08-03

can with impunity eat fresh ones
just out of the garden.
1t is just as possible to restore
any hardened city cucumber to
freshness and innocuousness with
no loss of flavor, although few
persons have the patience to give
the salad the necessary treat
ment. Restaurant keepers are
unwilling to take SO much time,
except, prehaps, the Germans.
They soak thinly cut slices of
cucumber until they are soft.
These are kept for most of day
in salt water, and usually parsley
and sometimes chive is cut up in
salt water.
When the cucumbers are ready
for serving they are free from all
poison, and they are in meas
ure free from taste. There is no
denying, however, that they are
digestible.
Some persons who have eaten
these cucumbers in the German
and Hungarian restaurants like
them better served here. They
lack, however, the crispness
which every American demands
in a salad.
This quality is retained by
putting the cut up cucumbers
into ice cold water for half an
hour before they are served.
After they have been cut they
should be soaked in salt water
for at least five hours. Then the
poison is gone, but the salad is
soft and limp.
Put for half an hour just be-
fore they are served, into ice
water, they will be white and
crisp, tasteful and free from the
power to disagree with the most
delicate stomach. After being
treated in this way they may be
served very prettily on a plate
in the form of the whole cucum-
Der before it has been cut.
To do this the slices should not
be separated in the salt water.
A hatpin run through every Gu
cumber after it has been sliced
will keep it intact. Served i'll
this with a fish or as salad, the
appearance of the cucumbers is
very.1ttasctive. But to suit the
variV kof taste, it is easier to
do more in a salad when the
slices are not kept together.
Cucumbers cut very thin, and,
of course, soaked in advance,
mix very deliciously with ALI.
gator salad, and it is best in the
case of this combination to break
away from the alligator pear
salad. rule of using lemon juice
and take vinegar.
The taste of the two is not dis.
similar, and there must be q
pungency in the dressing which
alligator pears alone do not need
With thin scallions cut length.
wise the cucumbers blend in Q
way that any epicure would love
and cncumbers with green pep
pers, cut lengthwise, are a com
bination that offers some novelty
after the inevitable lettuce tina
most persons seem to think arr
the only salads in the market.
There are some new figs il
market which have brought de,
light to the persons who like
that fruit, but have never fount
it possible to make, even in i'm
aginations, the figs ordinaril,
sold bear any relation to thu
fresh fruit. Those that hav.
been stuffed and are kept damn
by some artificial means are to,
wet and insipid to please an,
man in the least bit captiou
about figs.
Nor are those to which add
tional flavor has been added
agreeable to the real epicure O
figs. Some of them have nuts il
the heart of the dried fig ano
Others have cherries. They may
be good enough as sweet, bu'
to the lover of figs they are not
attractive.
Nothing has come SO near thu
real article as the figs that hav,
recently been brought here
They are not cheap. There are
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