Today, an abundance of recipes, and most importantly, an abundance of products on store shelves allow you to set a festive table, setting it up with masterpieces and delights from any cuisine in the world. But the legendary Olivier salad remains an enduring value in many homes, especially on New Year's Eve, as obligatory as a glass of champagne and a Christmas tree. How did this dish happen to become a symbol of an entire era, survive it, and what metamorphoses did it have to endure until the moment when its recipe was finally formed?
The birth of a recipe
Such is the property of our hospitable land that everyone, getting into the Russian expanses, as if absorbs its spirit, sung by Pushkin, and "russet". A Russianized Frenchman who was born in Moscow (in 1837 or 1838) was the famous chef who bore the sonorous surname Olivier.
Being the owner of the Hermitage restaurant by the 60s of the 19th century, Nikolai, who hid his real name under a more attractive to the public - Lucien, became the author of the famous dish.
We gain knowledge about Moscow life and the way of life of that time, mainly thanks to Gilyarovsky. The writer was not too lazy to observe and convey to future generations what people ate and drank at that time. It is known about the Olivier salad, basically, that its author kept the recipe in strict confidence. None of the Moscow restaurateurs managed to thoroughly reproduce the composition, proportions and taste of this dish. It can be assumed with a high degree of probability that the author of the salad, who was constantly looking, in modern terms, for marketing moves to advertise his establishment, kept up the hype, glorifying a successful recipe.
The main salad dressing then, as to this day, was mayon sauce, which chefs in the Olivier family began to use for a long time. The Olivier family made some changes to this sauce by adding mustard and other ingredients, creating several unique versions of the product that won the hearts of the French and then the Russians. It was the sauce that gave the original name to the dish, which first appeared before Muscovites as "Game Mayonnaise".
One can only guess what the chef experienced, observing how the components of the portion of the new delicacy, neatly laid out in an intricate way, were first mixed by the visitors without looking at the plate, and only then ate. Apparently, therefore, the dish very quickly transformed into a salad, to which Muscovites forever assigned the name of the author.
An authentic recipe?
If the classic step-by-step recipe was kept secret and no one could get it repeated, how did the step-by-step preparation of the famous salad become public?
The genuine taste of the salad that made the Hermitage cuisine famous has really disappeared into oblivion. Only an approximate composition of it has survived, recorded by one of the gourmet visitors, and reproduced already in the 20th century, in 1904.
So, what was originally part of the legendary salad?
The meat base was a mixture of diced 1pc. boiled veal tongue, boiled lobster and fillets of two hazel grouses. Next, cucumbers were added - fresh and pickled, 2 pieces each, and for spice - 100 grams of pickled capers. Finely crumbled fresh lettuce leaves and cubes of 5 pieces of chicken eggs gave the salad a spring freshness, the mushroom soybeans popular at that time added a spicy note, and putting 100 grams of black pressed caviar in the salad was apparently necessary for its uniqueness and high cost.
The main ingredient that turned this mixture into a famous salad was Provencal mayonnaise, or Provencal mayonnaise, which required 400 grams for this composition.
From complex to simple
The first step towards simplifying the recipe was taken by Olivier himself, who used "home-grown" Russian crayfish instead of lobster. Their meat was less dense and more familiar to the taste of a domestic visitor, and 25 boiled crayfish cost several times cheaper than one exotic sea inhabitant.
The step-by-step preparation of the salad at the beginning was also accompanied by all sorts of difficulties, subtleties and almost mysteries. So, the hazel grouses had to be not only pre-fried, but also boiled with the addition of Madeira and champignons, reaching a strictly defined consistency of the broth, and then cooled along with the broth, so as not to let it lose its tenderness. The crayfish had to be immersed in boiling water with their heads down, which guaranteed their juiciness. And which of the Provencal herbs Olivier used during cooking, we will never know. With the death of the great restaurateur in 1883, the original composition was finally lost. The Olivier Partnership, having inherited the restaurant, released a recipe from its possession, which began a triumphant march through the kitchens of Russia.
The second simplifying substitution befell capers, which were completely replaced by pickled cucumbers, the favorite among Russians.
And off we go.
Not only every good restaurant, but also an ordinary inn of the average hand offered its own version of this salad. At what stage potatoes and carrots got into it, when pressed caviar disappeared, one can only guess. But even the revolution of 1917 and the hungry years of the civil war did not erase from the memory of people a favorite dish, which had both taste and benefits.
Along with the revival of the "bourgeois" way of life during the NEP, culinary preferences also returned. In the Moskva restaurant serving the highest party elite, in 1925 the head of the establishment Ivan Ivanov revives the legendary dish under the name of Stolichniy salad. It includes only 200 grams of "poultry meat", the number of eggs is reduced to 3, fresh lettuce leaves successfully replace the apple, and the color and spice are complemented by 3 pieces. boiled carrots and 2 pcs. onions. Crustaceans finally disappear from the recipe, but boiled potatoes cut into cubes appear, which once served as a side dish. And it is in this recipe that the now obligatory green peas appear, replacing both capers and fresh cucumbers.
By the changes that befell the salad from the 1920s to the 1950s, one can judge the growth of the well-being of the Soviet people. In the 55th edition of the cookbook, "Stolichny" salad returns "poultry or game" meat, which requires only 60 grams, crayfish tails, lettuce leaves, "Yuzhny" soy sauce, and even olives appear. It is recommended to use olive mayonnaise for salad.
Soviet home version
To prepare a delicious, inexpensive table for the holiday, and to make cooking easy - this is the threefold task that every Soviet housewife solved in the kitchen. Therefore, word of mouth quickly spread among the housewives an easy salad recipe, which for a long time reigned at Soviet feasts.
Poultry meat has been successfully replaced by boiled sausage, tender in consistency and affordable, which did not need to be "taken out" from under the floor. Pickled or pickled cucumbers were carefully harvested in the summer and rolled up in bottles and jars with their own hands at home. The scarce green peas were purchased ahead of time and stored for a special occasion. Whether to put carrots, onions, herbs in the salad, whether to add an apple, now each housewife decided on her own, endlessly indulging in her own tricks when creating a popularly favorite dish. And only mayonnaise remained an unchanged component, turning the high-calorie mixture into a homemade salad, which was still called Olivier. Fortunately, the industry quickly took over its production, and a family of any income could afford to buy a jar of Provencal. Its deficit at first was not much less than that of peas, but gradually faded away due to the relative simplicity in manufacture and composition.
This is how this simple recipe called "Olivier salad" has survived to this day, becoming a household name and forever remaining a symbol of the USSR era. It is difficult to say what awaits him in the future, with its increased calorie content and an abundance of carbohydrates. But it is noteworthy that the Soviet version of this dish has received the name "Russian salad" all over the world.
