4. SELECTION OF SALADS.--Although salads, through their variety, offer
the housewife an opportunity to vary her meals, they require a little
attention as to their selection if a properly balanced meal is to be the
result. Salads that are high in food value or contain ingredients
similar to those found in the other dishes served in the meal, should be
avoided with dinners or with other heavy meals. For instance, a fish or
a meat salad should not be served with a dinner, for it would supply a
quantity of protein to a meal that is already sufficiently high in this
food substance because of the fact that meat also is included. Such a
salad, however, has a place in a very light luncheon or a supper, for it
helps to balance such a meal. The correct salad to serve with a dinner
that contains a number of heavy dishes is a vegetable salad, if enough
vegetables are not already included, or a fruit salad, if the dessert
does not consist of fruit. In case a fruit salad is selected, it is
often made to serve for both the salad and the dessert course.

5. SALAD ACCOMPANIMENTS.--In addition to the ingredients used in the
preparation of salads, dressings usually form an important part. These
vary greatly as to ingredients and consequently as to composition, but
most of them contain considerable fat and therefore increase the food
value of the salad. Then, too, an accompaniment of some kind is
generally served with salads to make them more attractive and more
pleasing to the taste. This may be a wafer or a cracker of some
description or a small sandwich made of bread cut into thin slices and
merely buttered or buttered and then spread with a filling of some sort.
Such accompaniments, of course, are not a necessity, but they add enough
to the salad to warrant their use.