Chapter St. Simonism to Saliens of S by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Salacacabia or Salacacaby of Apicius. An uneatable soup of great pretensions. King, in his Art of Cookery, gives the recipe of this soup: “Bruise in a mortar parsley-seed, dried peneryal, dried mint, ginger, green coriander, stoned raisins, honey, vinegar, oil, and wine. Put them into a cacabulum, with three crusts of Pycentine bread, the flesh of a pullet, vestine cheese, pine-kernels, cucumbers, and dried onions, minced small; pour soup over all, garnish with snow, and serve up in the cacabulum.”

“At each end there are dishes of the salacacabia of the Romans: one is made of parsley, penny-royal, cheese, pinetops, honey, vinegar, brine, eggs, cucumbers, onions, and hen-livers; the other is much the same as soup maigre.”- Smollett: Peregrine Pickle.

Salace (3 syl.). The sea, or rather the salt or briny deep; the wife of Neptune.

“Triton, who boasts his high Neptunian race,
Sprung from the god by Salace's embrace.”
Camoens: Lusiad, book vi.

Salad Days Days of inexperience, when persons are very green.

“My salad days.
When I was green in judgment.”
Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra, i. 5.

   A pen'orth of salad oil. A strapping; a castigation. It is a joke on All Fools' Day to send one to the saddler's for a “peno'rth of salad oil.” The pun is between “salad oil,” as above, and the French avoir de la salade, “to be flogged.” The French salader and salade are derived from the salle or saddle on which schoolboys were at one time birched. A block for the purpose used to be kept in some of our public schools. Oudin translates the phrase “Donner la salle à un escolier” by “Scopar un scolari innanzi à tutti gli altri.” (Recherches Italiennes et Francoises, part ii. 508.)

Salamander, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, is a human form pinched to death with the cold. (See Undines .)
   Salamander. A sort of lizard, fabled to live in fire, which, however, it quenched by the chill of its body. Pliny tells us he tried the experiment once, but the creature was soon burnt to a powder. (Natural History, x. 67; xxix. 4.) Salamanders are not uncommon, especially the spotted European kind (Greek, salamandria).
   Salamander. Francois I. of France adopted as his badge “a lizard in the midst of flames,” with the legend “Nutrisco et extinguo” (“I nourish and extinguish”). The Italian motto from which this legend was borrowed was, “Nudrisco il buono e spengo il reo” (“I nourish the good and extinguish the bad”). Fire purifies good metal, but consumes rubbish. (See ante.)
   Salamander. Anything of a fiery-red colour. Falstaff calls Bardolph's nose “a burning lamp,” “a salamander,” and the drink that made such “a fiery meteor” he calls “fire.”

“I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years.”- Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV., iv. 3.

Salamander's Wool Asbestos, a fibrous mineral, affirmed by the Tartars to be made “of the root of a tree.” It is sometimes called “mountain flax,” and is not combustible.

Salary The salt rations. The Romans served out rations of salt and other necessaries to their soldiers and civil servants. The rations altogether were called by the general name of salt, and when money was substituted for the rations the stipend went by the same name. (Latin, salarium, from sal, salt.)

Salchichon A huge Italian sausage. Thomas, Duke of Genoa, a boy of Harrow school, was so called, when he was thrust forward by General Prim as an “inflated candidate” for the Spanish throne.

Sale by the Candle A species of auction. An inch of candle being lighted, he who made the bid as the candle gave its expiring wink was declared the buyer; sometimes a pin is stuck in a candle, and the last bidder before the pin falls out is the buyer.

Salem is Jireh-Salem, or Jerusalem.

“Melchisedec, King of Salem ... being by interpretation ... King of peace.”- Hebrews vii. 1, 2.