CHAPTER IV 

 OF SALLETS 



" In Health, if Sallet Herbs you can't endure, 

 Sick, you'll desire them, or for Food or Cure." 



Old Proverb. 



" Cold herbes now wholsom bee : 

 But let no blood in any wise : 

 By running stream and shadow tree, 

 Thy booke thou mayest well exercise." 



July, Ram's Little Dodoen, 1606. 



" We present you a taste of our English garden House- 

 wifry in the matter of Sallets. And though some of them 

 may be vulgar (as are most of the best things) yet we impart 

 them to show the Plenty, Riches, and variety of the Sallet- 

 Garden. And to justify what has been asserted of the 

 possibility of living (not unhappily) on Herbs and Plants 

 according to Divine institution." John Evelyn, Acetaria, 

 1699. 



" STOCK-DOVES, pheasants and partridges," one old her- 

 balist says, " are the best sallet-gatherers in the way of 

 picking tender young sallets, and in their crops we find the 

 very tenderest of young buds, and even first rudiments of 

 several plants." Though we may not care to include in our 

 modern salads all the green food picked by these birds, we 

 might with advantage re-introduce the herbs and flowers our 

 forefathers used. Some of their salads, as may be seen in 

 the receipts, were very magnificent affairs indeed, and the 

 principal ornament of the banqueting table, but even the 

 ordinary ones with their numerous daintily arranged ingre- 

 dients and " stre wings " of edible flowers must have been 

 fascinating to look at. John Evelyn, the writer of Acetaria t 

 was a great authority on salads, and he tells us that " the 

 Potagdre was in such reputation that she who neglected her 



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