Our ancestors served salads with roasted meat, roasted poultry, &c. They had a great many which are now no longer in vogue. They ate leeks, cooked in the wood-ashes, and seasoned with salt and honey; borage, mint, and parsley, with salt and oil; lettuce, fennel, mint, chervil, parsley, and elder-flowers mixed together. They also classed among their salads an agglomeration of feet, heads, cocks’ combs, and fowls’ livers, cooked, and seasoned with parsley, mint, vinegar, pepper, and cinnamon. Nettles, and the twigs of rosemary, formed delicious salads for our forefathers; and to these they sometimes added pickled gherkins.[IX-136] ENDIVE. Pliny assures us that the juice of this plant, mixed with vinegar and oil of roses, is an excellent remedy for the head-ache;[IX-137] we leave to the proper judges a pharmaceutical mixture which does not belong to our province, and which we only quote _en passant_. Virgil thought endive bitter,[IX-138] but he did not speak ill of it. Columella recommended this salad to fastidious and satiated palates;[IX-139] this is praising it. The Egyptians appreciated its merits,[IX-140] which the Greeks had too much sense and good taste to disdain; and the Romans ate it prepared in the following manner:-- Choose some fine endive; wash it well; drain off all the water; add a little gravy and oil; then chop some onions very small; strew them over the endive, and add honey and vinegar.[IX-141] It is understood that the sweet savour of the honey corrects the bitterness of the plant; but a judicious attention must preside over the quantity of that substance, for too much or too little might easily spoil this salad of Apicius. ONIONS. Whoever wishes to preserve his health must eat every morning, before breakfast, young onions, with honey.[IX-142] Such a treat is assuredly not very tempting: besides, this rather strong vegetable leaves after it a most unpleasant perfume, which long reminds us of its presence; wherefore this recipe has not met with favour, and, indeed, it is much to be doubted whether it will ever become fashionable. Alexander the Great found the onion in Egypt, where the Hebrews had learned to like it.[IX-143] He brought it into Greece, where it was given as food to the troops, whose martial ardour[IX-144] it was thought to excite. Pliny assures us that Gaul produced a small kind, which the Romans called Gallic onions, and which they thought more delicate than those of Italy.[IX-145] At any rate, it was a dish given up to plebeians and the poor. Horace opposed to it fish--the luxurious nourishment of rich and dainty Romans.[IX-146] In spite of this reprobation on the part of the elegant poet, Apicius does not fear to introduce the plant in his _Olus Molle_, a kind of _Julienne_, not devoid of merit.