This section is from the book "Simple Italian Cookery", by Antonia Isola. Also available from Amazon: Simple Italian Cookery.
Boil in their skins three good-sized potatoes, peel them and slice them, then put them into a salad bowl, and pour over them one-half a glass of white wine. Do this about two or three hours before they are wanted, so the potatoes will have time thoroughly to absorb the wine. From time to time mix them with a fork and spoon to let the wine permeate. A few minutes before the meal make a good French salad dressing, add some pickled peppers cut up, some capers, and some chopped-up parsley, pour on the French dressing, mix up well, and serve.
Wash a good lettuce and a bunch of water-cress. Cut a cold boiled beef into strips, add six radishes, two hard-boiled eggs chopped up, and one small sliced cucumber. Arrange the lettuce-leaves in a salad-bowl, mix the other ingredients with a sufficient quantity of mayonnaise sauce, put them in the midst of the lettuce, and serve.
Take a head of endive, wash it and dry it well, and put it into a salad-bowl. Pour over it three tablespoons of good olive-oil. Mix one tablespoon of honey (or sugar), one of vinegar, and salt and pepper in a cup, and pour over the salad just before serving.
Cut one carrot and one turnip into slices, and cook them in boiling soup. When cold, mix them with two cold boiled potatoes and one beet cut into strips. Add a very little chopped leeks or onion, pour some sauce, "Lombarda" (see Sauces, page 31), over the salad, and garnish with water-cress.
Chop up six lettuce-leaves and three stalks of celery, cut up the remains of a cold fowl in small pieces, and mix with one tablespoon of vinegar and salt and pepper in a salad bowl. Pour a cup of mayonnaise sauce over, and garnish with quarters of hard-boiled egg, one tablespoon of capers, six stoned olives, and some small, tender lettuce-leaves.
Cut into small pieces one cold boiled beet and half an onion. Add some cold boiled string-beans, some cold boiled asparagus tips, two tablespoons of cold cooked peas, one cold boiled carrot, and some celery. Mix them together, and pour over all a mayonnaise sauce. Add the juice of a lemon and serve.
 
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