On Salad Greens and Their Preparation

There is a notion rife in America that it is quite French and proper to tear salad greens with the fingers. This method is presumably all right, but much better to some minds is to cut the greens to the desired size, shape, or length with a sharp knife. Tearing greens, with the exception of iceberg lettuce, tends to bruise them.

Iceberg lettuce is by far the commonest, most durable salad green in America and it is also the least interesting. The best salad greens include home-grown garden salads; watercress, available in many a mountain stream and riverbed; limestone or Bibb, Romaine, or Boston lettuce; snow-white endive, most of which is imported from Belgium; escarole, and curly endive or chicory.