Tomato Salad.—For making tomato salad you require red, ripe tomatoes; the smoother they are the better, but the chief points are—very ripe and very red. Never use those pink, crinkly tomatoes which look something like milk stained with plum juice. If tomatoes are picked unripe, and then allowed to ripen afterwards, they become rotten and worthless. Slice up half a dozen or more tomatoes—sometimes it will be necessary to remove the core and pips, sometimes not; add a little oil, a little vinegar, and some pepper and salt. Tomato salad is one of the few that are very nice without any oil at all. Of course, this is a matter of taste. Some persons slice up a few onions and add to the tomatoes. In addition to this you can add some slices of cold potatoes. In this latter case, heap the potatoes up in the middle of the dish in the shape of a dome sprinkle some chopped parsley over the potatoes, put a border of sliced onion round the base, and then a border of sliced tomato outside that. This makes the dish look pretty.

Many persons rub the dish or salad-bowl with a bead of garlic. This is quite sufficient to flavour the salad; but never chop garlic for salads.

Egg Salad.—Egg salad consists of an ordinary salad made with French lettuces, with an extra quantity of hard-boiled eggs. If you want to make the salad look very pretty on the top, cut up the lettuces and dress them with oil and vinegar in the ordinary way. Make the tops of the lettuces (which should be placed in a round salad-bowl) as smooth as you can without pressing them down unnecessarily. Now take six hard-boiled eggs, separate the yolks from the whites, powder the yolks, and chop up the whites small. Sprinkle a ring of yellow round the edge of the salad-bowl, say an inch in width, then put a ring of white round, and place the remainder of yolk in the middle, almost up to the centre. Have the centre about two inches in diameter. We now have a yellow centre surrounded by a broad white rim (as, of course, there is more white than yellow), and an outside yellow ring, which meets the white china bowl. Reserve about a teaspoonful of pieces of finely chopped white, and put them in a saucer, with a few drops of cochineal, and shake them. This turns them a bright red. Sprinkle these red specks very sparingly on the white, and take about half a teaspoonful of chopped blanched parsley, and sprinkle these green specks on the yellow. This makes the dish look pretty.