Old-fashioned Salad with Lydia’s Dressing*

This simple old-fashioned salad is one of my absolute favourites. It can be quite delicious when it’s made with a crisp lettuce, good homegrown Irish tomatoes and cucumbers, free-range eggs and home-preserved beetroot. If on the other hand you make it with pale battery eggs, watery tomatoes, tired lettuce and cucumber and—worst of all — vinegary beetroot from a jar, you’ll wonder why you bothered!

We serve this traditional salad in Ballymaloe as a starter, with an old-fashioned sala