In this recipe, as I remember, there was also pressed caviar. Olivier prepared it close to this recipe. Instead of hazel grouse-quail, instead cancer necks-crab meat, and, instead of pressed caviar - red, but lying separately from the salad. And yes, I added it to homemade mayonnaise Worcestershire sauce. Very, very tasty!!!

Here is another version of the Togo Olivier recipe
Kabul sauce (“Kabul soya” as it was often called in the 19th century) is made from flour, broth (or water) sautéed in butter, grated horseradish, cream and salt. Ingredients: flour 20 g; butter 10 g; broth 50 g; horseradish 20 g; cream 20 g; salt - to taste.

Olivier salad, the way it should be.

The pre-revolutionary Olivier salad recipe includes hazel grouse and black caviar. It was invented in the second half of the 19th century by the Frenchman Lucien Olivier, who moved to Russia, one of the founders of the legendary Moscow restaurant “Hermitage”.
Interestingly, it was this salad that largely provided the restaurant with great fame. And both the richest merchants and industrialists and famous writers loved to gather at the Hermitage. For example, in 1879, a gala dinner was held at the Hermitage in honor of I.S. Turgenev, in 1880 - in honor of F.M. Dostoevsky, in 1899 - the famous celebration of the centenary of Pushkin’s birthday, which was attended by most of the most prominent cultural figures of that time. And, of course, all these feasts were not complete without original salad Olivie. True, by the end of the 19th century they began to appear different variations its ingredients, including those that incredibly increased the cost of an already expensive salad. And in Soviet times On the contrary, the traditional list of ingredients became such that Olivier turned into a truly folk dish. And, nevertheless, it is not a sin to sometimes treat yourself to this salad, prepared in the traditions of Tsarist Russia. And we present one of the recipes from those years, not the most complex, but at the same time quite luxurious, and most importantly - tasty.

For this dish you will need (for 4 servings)

Hazel grouse – 2 pieces.
Calf tongue – 1 piece.
Black caviar – 100 g.
Crayfish – 25 pieces.
Pickles – 1/2 jar.
Fresh cucumbers – 2 pieces.
Quail egg – 10 pieces
Pickled capers – 80 g.
Provencal sauce – 1/2 jar.
Kabul sauce - to taste.

Cooking method

1. Fry the hazel grouse and chop the pulp.
2. Boil the tongue and cut into equal pieces.
3. Add boiled crayfish meat, pickle cubes, chopped eggs and cucumbers.
4. Gently mix the ingredients, put them in a salad bowl, add Kabul sauce, capers, Provencal sauce.
5. When serving, decorate the salad with caviar.

Important Additions

IN original recipe Provencal sauce is not mayonnaise from the store, but 400 grams olive oil, whipped with two fresh egg yolks, with the addition of French vinegar and mustard.
Kabul sauce (“Kabul soya” as it was often called in the 19th century) is made from flour sautéed in butter, broth (or water), grated horseradish, cream and salt. Ingredients: flour 20 g; butter 10 g; broth 50 g; horseradish 20 g; cream 20 g; salt - to taste.
Thus, preparing Olivier according to the pre-revolutionary recipe will require you to spend a little more time and much more costs than the Soviet version of this salad that is familiar and beloved by many. But the result is worth it!

May vary depending on the “supplier” fish. For example, there is the legendary “golden caviar”. This is light black caviar of the rarest fish - albino beluga, which is approximately 90-100 years old. This rare goldfish, with a congenital genetic disorder, provides the most nutritious caviar.

Olivier recipe with black caviar

Ingredients

Cooking method:

Cut into small cubes boiled potatoes, tongue, chicken breast, pickled and fresh cucumbers. Add grated boiled eggs, green peas, crayfish tails (without brine), salt, season with mayonnaise and mix everything thoroughly. Cool the salad in the refrigerator for about 30-40 minutes.

Then we put it on a dish, on top we put boiled eggs cut in half and black caviar. You can put it in small portions into tartlets and simply sprinkle with black caviar.

Bon appetit!

Helpful information:

Sturgeon caviar - black caviar according to GOST, is divided into three types: sturgeon, beluga, stellate sturgeon. IN Russian Federation A ban was introduced on the production of black caviar due to the decline in the number of sturgeon fish. Some species are on the verge of complete extinction. On the territory of Russia there are several fish farms engaged in the breeding of sturgeon and, accordingly, the extraction of black caviar from the grown individuals. This caviar is natural, which is only slightly inferior in beneficial properties wild sturgeon caviar.

Do you know the secrets and legendary history of Olivier salad? How difficult it is to restore exact recipe famous dish, which was created in the 1860s in Moscow, in house No. 14, on Trubnaya Square on Petrovsky Boulevard, corner of Neglinnaya, which in our time is occupied by the Moscow theater “School of Modern Play”. You will learn the secrets of the legendary Olivier recipe by reading our story about the most famous salad in Russia.

If we turn to some old recipes, then among them you can find many interesting, and even legendary dishes. How do you like the achaic “Cumberland sauce”, the name of which can be found in A. T. Averchenko’s book “Fragments of the Broken Pieces” and in the King’s “Culinary Guide” French cuisine Auguste Escoffier, from where we reliably know that it was invented by cooks in the county of Cumberland, located in northern England, where it was served as spicy seasoning for dishes prepared from game. Its recipe contains redcurrant jelly, port wine, shallots, orange and lemon zest, fresh orange and lemon juice, mustard, cayenne pepper and ginger powder.

What if you hear such a culinary name as “venison cheese”? Intriguing? And this recipe is common in European cookbooks and refers to cold appetizers made from fried game meat (partridge, black grouse, hazel grouse, pheasant), from which minced meat is first made, wine, strong meat broth, butter, grated cheese, grated nutmeg, black ground pepper and salt - mix everything until smooth and serve in portions in dough baskets or other molds.

Secrets of the legendary Olivier salad

According to lovers of secrets and mysteries, the famous author of the legendary salad, culinary specialist Lucien Olivier, whose grave is located in the former German, and now Vvedenskoye, Moscow cemetery, took away the original recipe for his culinary masterpiece.

During his lifetime, the famous Moscow culinary specialist Lucien Olivier, owner of the Hermitage restaurant, called his signature salad “Game Mayonnaise.” It with light hand Moscow gourmets have become popular salad assigned the name of its creator, which stuck with him along with the wide distribution of this very savory dish in Russian cuisine, which has become one of the main attributes not only in Russia, but also for compatriots far beyond its borders

History of Olivier salad - Moscow, 19th century

In the book “Practical Fundamentals of Culinary Art,” published in 1889 and going through 12 editions, the last of which was in 1927 in the printing house of the Financial Department of the Leningrad Gubernia Executive Committee, you can find the exact legendary recipe Olivier salad and its history. The author of this book, Pelageya Pavlovna Aleksandrova-Ignatievna (1872-1953), a culinary teacher at the Imperial Women's Patriotic Society, created not just a thorough textbook on the art of cooking, but a real monument of the era, which conveyed to the modern and future reader the authentic recipe and professional techniques preparing all kinds of Russian dishes.

The next time “Olivier salad” was brought to the wave of new popularity was by Soviet culinary specialists, when in the 30s of the last century it appeared on the menu of the Moscow restaurant under the name “Stolichny”, the cooks of which, it seems, still remembered the true taste of this famous salad, on which connoisseurs of haute cuisine of the time agreed, claiming almost complete similarity with its classic predecessor.

The “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food,” published in 1939, which became the first example of a large cookbook in the USSR, contains a recipe called “Game Salad,” which is the legendary “Olivier Salad.”

Over time, the multi-component recipe for the legendary Olivier salad “lost the ingredients”, narrowing down to 3 main components: boiled eggs, potatoes and cucumbers. As the popularity of the salad grew in popularity, many versions of “Olivier” emerged among the people, but the main 6 components somehow became established: potatoes; chicken eggs hard-boiled, boiled or semi-smoked sausage (optional - boiled chicken); fresh, salted or pickled cucumbers; green canned peas, mayonnaise.

The author of the rumor about the mysterious disappearance of the original recipe for “Olivier salad” was the writer Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky, an expert on Moscow city life, who in the book “Moscow and Muscovites” noted: “It was considered special chic when dinners were prepared by the French chef Olivier, who was even then famous for what he had invented.” Olivier salad,” without which lunch would not be lunch and the secret of which he did not reveal. No matter how hard the gourmets tried, it didn’t work out: this and that.”

And so, the inappropriate use of the word “secret” by “Uncle Gilyay” (as his friends called him) and the enthusiastic opinion about the golden hands of Lucien Olivier became the beginning of the contrived mystery of the disappearance of the recipe for his favorite salad. This is confirmed by the prosaic fact that in the Hermitage restaurant there are still for a long time and after his death this legendary salad was served. In addition, the recipe for “Olivier salad” was also known to the chefs of the St. Petersburg restaurant “Bear” on Konyushennaya Street; and the cooks of the famous Testov tavern in Moscow, as evidenced by Gilyarovsky himself, describing his lunch in a friendly company: “In front of me is the bill of the Testov tavern of thirty-six rubles... We started from scratch.” - For rhyme, as I. F. Gorbunov used to say: vodka and herring. Then, with Achuevskaya caviar, then with grainy caviar with a tiny pie of burbot livers, first a glass of cold white myrrh with ice, and then of the same, tinted with a little picon, we drank English with brains and bison with Olivier salad...”

For a more or less complete picture in this story, let’s add to the above versions of the Olivier salad several other interesting versions of it, which may push you to create similar dishes.

Olivier salad according to a recipe from the book “Practical Fundamentals of Culinary Art”, 1899

Necessary products and their proportions per person.

• hazel grouse - 1/2 pieces;
• potatoes - 2 pieces;
• cucumbers - 1 piece;
• salad - 3-4 leaves;
• cancer necks - 3 pieces;
• lanspik - 1/2 cup;
• kaporets - 1 teaspoon;
• olives - 3-5 pieces.

1. Cut the fillet of fried good hazel grouse into blankets and mix with blankets of boiled, not crumbly potatoes and slices fresh cucumbers, add Kaporets and olives and pour in a large amount of Provencal sauce, with the addition of soy-Kabul.
2. Once cooled, transfer to a crystal vase and remove with crayfish tails, lettuce leaves and chopped lancepick.
3. Serve very cold.

According to the book “Practical Principles of Culinary Art” (1899), fresh cucumbers can be replaced with large gherkins. Instead of hazel grouse, you can take veal, partridge and chicken, but a real Olivier appetizer is always prepared from hazel grouse.

Interpretation of unclear words in Smirnova’s recipe:

1. Blanquettes (from the French blanc - pure, white) are straight pieces of food cut into parallel lines, used as semi-finished products for making dishes and culinary products.
2. Lanspik is chicken or meat broth boiled to a jelly state.
3. Soya-Kabul or Kabul sauce is a once popular spicy seasoning brought from Afghanistan.
4. Capers - capers, pickled or salted flower buds of the prickly caper plant.

2. “Game salad” according to the classic recipe from “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” (1939)

Ingredients:

• hazel grouse (boiled or fried) - 1 piece;
• boiled potatoes - 300 grams;
• gherkins or pickles - 75 grams;
• green salad - 75 grams;
• boiled chicken eggs - 2 pieces;
• mayonnaise sauce - 0.5 cups;
• soy-kabul - 0.5 tablespoon;
• table vinegar - 1 tablespoon;
• powdered sugar - 0.5 teaspoon;
• salt - to taste.

"Game Salad" classic recipe cook like this:

1. Cut hazel grouse fillet into thin slices, half a hard-boiled egg and gherkins, and dried lettuce leaves into 3-4 pieces.
2. Place everything in a bowl, add salt, pour over mayonnaise sauce, add soy-kabul, vinegar or lemon juice.
3. Place the seasoned and mixed salad in a heap in a salad bowl.
4. Place lettuce leaves in the center of the mound, and around it in an oval, garnish with boiled eggs, cut into quarters, slices of fresh cucumber and pieces of pickles.

You can decorate the salad with crayfish necks, pieces of crab, and tomato slices. This salad can be prepared from various game or poultry, meat, veal and other things.

3. “Stolichny” salad according to a restaurant recipe from the times of the USSR

Ingredients for 1 serving:

• poultry or game (ready) - 60 grams;
• boiled potatoes - 60 grams;
• fresh, salted or pickled cucumbers - 40 grams;
• green salad - 10 grams;
• cancerous cervixes - 10 grams;
• boiled egg - 2 pieces;
• “Yuzhny” sauce - 15 grams;
• mayonnaise - 70 grams;
• pickles - 10 grams;
• olives - 10 pieces.

The Stolichny salad is prepared according to a restaurant recipe as follows:

1. Cut boiled or fried game or poultry, boiled peeled potatoes, fresh, salted or pickled cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs into thin slices (2-2.5 centimeters), and chop green salad leaves.
2. Mix all the chopped products, season with mayonnaise sauce, add “Yuzhny” sauce for taste.
3. Place the mixed salad in a heap in a salad bowl and decorate with mugs or slices of hard-boiled eggs, pieces of pickles, lettuce, thin mugs of fresh cucumbers.

On the salad you can put beautifully sliced ​​game fillets, crayfish tails or pieces of canned crab and olives

4. Homemade Olivier salad

Ingredients:

• boiled potatoes - 4 pieces;
• boiled carrots - 2 roots;
• cucumbers - 2 pieces (any);
• boiled chicken egg;
• canned green peas - 1 jar;
• ham (sausage, boiled meat, fillet smoked chicken) - 300 grams;
• mayonnaise - 100 grams;
• salt - to taste.

Olivier salad homemade recipe cook like this:

1. Boil vegetables and eggs, cool and peel
2. Cut all ingredients into equal small cubes and place in one large container.
3. Add green peas without broth, mayonnaise and mix everything carefully. All that remains is to place it in mini salad bowls or bowls, decorate the top with a sprig of fresh herbs and be sure to let it brew in a cool place so that all its ingredients are saturated with a bouquet of joint aroma.

As you can see, the Olivier salad in this case does not have onions, although your salad and you can afford onion. If you are afraid of its harsh taste, scald the chopped onion with boiling water.

Lucien Olivier (French Lucien Olivier) - 1838 - 1883 - a cook of French or Belgian origin who ran the Hermitage restaurant in Moscow in the early 1860s - the author of the legendary Olivier salad, who took with him the exact secret of its preparation.

Publications in the Traditions section

Cultural code: the legendary Olivier

The building of the Hermitage restaurant. 1900s. Photo: wikimedia.org

Chef of the Hermitage restaurant Lucien Olivier. Photo: persons-info.com

Interior of the Hermitage restaurant. 1900s. Photo: oldmos.ru

The Frenchman Lucien Olivier, the chef of the Hermitage restaurant on Trubnaya Square, hardly planned to end up in the history of Russian gastronomy. But I got it. The snack, which he invented in the 60s of the 19th century for the satiated guests of an expensive restaurant, quickly fell to the taste of the Moscow public. Then Russian National cuisine- nourishing, plentiful, but quite simple - gradually changed under the pressure of the persistent fashion for everything French.

Olivier got it right: his signature appetizer with a special Provençal sauce, the grandfather of modern mayonnaise, almost immediately became signature dish"Hermitage". In the book “Moscow and Muscovites” the writer Gilyarovsky said: “It was considered special chic when dinners were prepared by the Frenchman Olivier, who was even then famous for the Olivier salad he invented, without which dinner would not be lunch and the secret of which he did not reveal. No matter how hard the gourmets tried, it didn’t work out: this or that.”.

Culinary historians usually agree that it was the sauce: the cook Lucien, himself originally from Provence, was well versed in the local oil and used only a certain type of it. However, this secret was quickly revealed, and within several years the salad entered the menu of all somewhat reputable establishments. Catering.

“We started at first with the herring. Then we had Achuevskaya caviar, then grainy caviar with a tiny burbot liver pie, first a glass of cold white Smirnova with ice, and then we drank English with brains and bison with Olivier salad.”

Vladimir Gilyarovsky. "Moscow and Muscovites"

Over the next decade, the salad became so popular that its recipes began to be published in cookbooks for a wealthy audience. These are not books for young inept housewives and not “the secret secrets of a cheap lunch.” Olivier requires skillful hands - and money.

Culinary Manual, 1897

Salad "Olivier"

Necessary products and their proportion for 5 persons.

Grouse - 3 pcs., potatoes - 5 pcs., cucumbers - 5 pcs., salad - 2 cobs, Provencal - ½ bottle. butter, crayfish necks - 15 pcs., lanspicou - 1 glass, olives, gherkins - only ¼ pound, truffles - 3 pcs. Cooking instructions: Sear, gut, season and fry natural banquet shot hazel grouse, cool and remove all the flesh from the bones. Cut the fillets into blankets, and chop the rest of the pulp a little. Make a good broth from the game bones, from which you can then prepare lanspik. Boil the potatoes in their skins, then peel them and remove them into a hole the size of a three-kopeck coin, and chop the scraps. Fresh cucumbers peel and cut into thin slices. Cut the truffles into circles. Boil the crayfish and take their necks. Prepare thick sauce Provencal, add Kabul Son to it for spiciness, and for better taste and the color of a little heavy cream. Peel large olives using a screw. When everything is prepared, take a glass vase or deep salad bowl and start laying everything in rows. First, put the trimmings of game and potatoes on the bottom, lightly seasoning them with Provençal, then put a row of game on top, then some potatoes, cucumbers, some truffles, olives and crayfish necks, pour all this with some of the sauce so that it is juicy, put a row of game on top again and etc. Leave some of the crayfish necks and truffles for decoration on top. When all the products are placed in a vase in the form of a slide, then cover the top with Provençal so that the products are not visible. Place some kind of salad in the middle of the vase as a bouquet, and arrange crayfish necks, claws from boiled crayfish and truffles. Chop the frozen lanspik, put it in a cornet, make a thin elegant mesh on top and cool everything thoroughly.

Note: In exactly the same way, you can prepare a salad from the remaining roast: beef, veal, grouse, chicken, etc., as well as from any non-bony fish. Sometimes, if desired, you can add to these salads fresh tomatoes, cut into circles. But the real Olivier appetizer is always prepared from hazel grouse.
Note: Lanspeak is a thickened, sticky, transparent broth with the density of jelly. To get a bottle of ready-made lanspeak, you need to take a bottle of ready-made broth and 12 sheets of gelatin, or a veal head, or two ox legs, or 5-6 veal legs.

In other books of this period you can find recipes without olives, but, for example, with pressed caviar or lobster. There are many options, but one thing in common: in the 19th century, Olivier was a layered salad for the upper classes. But having stepped from restaurants to home tables, Olivier is gradually losing its culinary snobbery and becoming more democratic.

Cookbook, 1912

Olivier salad. Proportion: chickens - 1 pc., boiled potatoes - 5 pcs., fresh cucumbers - 5 pcs., truffle - 1 pc., Provencal sauce - 4 table. spoons.

Preparation: boil the chicken in broth and, after removing, cool, remove all the flesh, both fillet and legs, cut diagonally, thinly, into planks. Take large potatoes, round them into columns and cut them into kopecks. Peel fresh cucumbers and chop finely. Place all this in a saucepan, add a little salt, add Provencal sauce and stir, and then put it in a salad bowl, level it with a mound, top it with shredded truffles, and the salad is ready, served especially as an appetizer.
Note: Salad de boeuf (appetizer). The same as Olivier, but the difference is that you need to take boiled meat instead of chicken. Cut the meat into thin leaves, combine with cucumbers, potatoes and Provencal sauce. Garnish with truffles.

After 5 years royal Russia will end with the truffles. Mayakovsky’s propaganda declared hazel grouse to be bourgeois food, and those who survived the revolution, and then the Civil War, had no time for culinary delights. In the hungry year of 1921, writer Arkady Averchenko recalled past feasts in his work “Fragments of the Broken to Pieces”: “A glass of lemon vodka cost fifty kopecks, but for the same fifty kopecks the friendly barmen literally forced an appetizer on you: fresh caviar, jellied duck, Cumberland sauce, Olivier salad, game cheese.”. However, the national cuisine at that time was in obvious decline: rusty rationed herring, saccharin, combined fat. All that remains is to remember Olivier.

In the relatively well-fed thirties, the history of salad - along with the history of the country - took a new turn. The chef of the Moscow restaurant, Ivan Ivanov, who, according to legend, once worked in the wings of Lucien Olivier himself, invents his own remake of an already well-known theme - the Stolichny salad. For the first time, canned food is added to the already known recipe: green peas and crab meat. But “Stolichny” is not yet a candidate for the role of Soviet salad number one. The NEP rehabilitates hazel grouse, sturgeon and crayfish: in the collections of recipes of that time there was an abundance of subtly similar snacks under playful names like “Silva” or “Parisien”. In such a variety, Olivier is not exactly losing ground, but it no longer claims to be the main holiday dish.

Cooking, a guide for catering establishments. 1945
Vegetable salad with game (Olivier)
Fillet of boiled or fried cold game, boiled potatoes, gherkins or pickled cucumbers are cut into thin slices, green lettuce leaves, soy-kabul [sauce], mayonnaise, and salt are added to them. All this is carefully mixed, placed in a heap in a salad bowl, decorated with slices or slices of hard-boiled eggs, lettuce, olives, slices of game and slices of green cucumber. You can put 2-3 crayfish tails or pieces of canned crab on the salad.

It is easy to notice that from French appetizer by this time there was little left. Stalin's Olivier is a fantasy thing. In 1948, the Soviet culinary bible, “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food,” recommended adding green salad, lemon juice, apples and even powdered sugar. In 1952, in a book calling for abundance and demonstrating the best examples of Soviet food photography, boiled carrots and, unexpectedly, cauliflower. They decorate the dish - when there is no fish - not with crayfish, but boiled egg, then the decoration gradually slides inside the salad bowl and becomes an obligatory ingredient. Olivier is still considered a game salad, but around it on the pages of the “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” there are more and more variations that are very similar in composition, including “Sausage Salad” (+ potatoes, celery, lettuce, gherkins, apple) and “ Salad with meat” (+ potatoes and cucumbers).

By the eighties, we have several remakes on the Olivier theme enshrined in mandatory collections of recipes: “Capital Salad” (chicken, potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, eggs, crabs), meat (all the same, only beef or tongue), “Seafood Salad” (fish, shrimp, potatoes, carrots, green peas) and the venerable “Game Salad,” now served with hazel grouse, tomatoes, beans and cauliflower. All this is generously seasoned with mayonnaise, and each recipe is accompanied by important notes: if such and such an ingredient is missing, you can replace it with another or completely leave the dish without it. It’s not surprising that in the end Brezhnev’s Olivier turned into a salad designer: what he got, he chopped up. But on the other hand, it is simple and inexpensive to prepare, ideal for cold weather and strong drinks, and recipe options are passed down from housewife to housewife and are consolidated by family tradition. Olivier successfully survives changes in ruling policies and financial crises, once again becoming the dish without which lunch would not be lunch.

Cooking in Russian, America, 2003
Russian salad (Olivje salad), a must-have at all Russian parties.
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, 1 medium onion, peeled, 6 large potatoes, 6 eggs, 8 medium pickled cucumbers, a cup of green peas, green onions and dill for serving.
Dressing: 1 tbsp. l olive oil, 1 cup mayonnaise, 1 cup sour cream, 1/4 tsp. salt, the same amount of ground pepper.
1. Wash chicken in cold water. Cut the onion in half. Cook the chicken until it is evenly white.
2. Remove the onion.
3. While the chicken is cooking, wash the potatoes well, place them in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cook until potatoes peel easily. Drain the water.
4. While the chicken and potatoes are cooking, place the eggs in a large saucepan. Fill with water and bring to a boil at high temperature. Reduce heat, cover and leave for 20-25 minutes. Rinse the boiled eggs cold water until they cool down.
5. Cool all ingredients until room temperature before cooking. Cut the chicken into small pieces. Peel the potatoes and eggs. Cut potatoes, eggs and cucumbers into cubes. Place in a large salad bowl.
6. Prepare the dressing in a small salad bowl. Mix everything, add dressing and sweet peas to the salad bowl.
In some areas, Russians put carrots or grated apple in olivje. And keep in mind that for a real traditional taste you can’t use low-fat mayonnaise and sour cream!

2015-12-09

Date: 09 December 2015

Tags:

A popular favorite, contemptuously rejected by apologists healthy eating, he is just as natural on any festive table like a penguin on an ice floe in Antarctica. Where would we be without him? We whittle it with bucket bowls to the immortal songs from “The Irony of Fate,” which we watch out of the corner of our eyes for the hundredth time. Respectful and slightly familiar address to him speaks only of incredible respect and honor. And what kind of hero is this? Well, of course, Olivier salad or simply “Salad” with a capital “S”. We’ll talk about it, or rather, about the transformation of its structure and ingredients, today, if you don’t mind, my reader. After all, he is a phenomenon, a process, an event, and not just food. And yet, yes, once a year I allow myself to eat it without thinking about calories. Olivier salad ingredients from different eras - in the studio!

Ingredients of Olivier salad of the pre-revolutionary period

When the object of our love and national pride was born is not known for certain. I once read that the publisher and editor of a magazine with the non-poetic name “Our Food,” M. A. Ignatiev, enjoyed eating it at the Hermitage restaurant during the All-Russian Exhibition of 1882. In those years, Master Olivier still reigned in the restaurant kitchen. Later, in 1894, the first considered reliable recipe for the cult snack was published in the above-mentioned printed publication. And for those times it was quite simple and democratic. Judge for yourself. It contains completely ordinary products for that time, which cannot be said about ours.

The original core composition of the pre-revolutionary period. Olivier "old style"

• Fried hazel grouse.
• Boiled, not crumbly potatoes.
• Fresh cucumbers.
• A few lettuce leaves.
• Cancerous necks.
• Capers.
• Olives.
• Good strong lanspike.
• Provencal.
• Soya Kabul.

Partridge, veal and chicken were offered as replacements for hazel grouse. It was emphasized that the correct Olivier is possible only with hazel grouse - nothing else. The bird was used exclusively as a shot bird obtained during a hunt. Nowadays they even raise black grouse on poultry farms, but then - only from the forest, be so kind as to bring them, pluck, singe, gut, fry! Everything else was an imitation and replacement of the original.

At the beginning of such a tragic and eventful twentieth century, Russian factory owners and factory owners threw money around in ways that were not childish. It was then that perhaps the most famous, legendary recipe appeared to the world. It already included elements of bourgeois luxury. I don’t know why, but it is he who is still considered canonical, which, in my opinion, is incorrect. To normal classic set above, the following components have been added, listed below.

Ingredients of the most bourgeois version

• Boiled eggs.
• Boiled veal tongue.
• Pressed caviar.
• Lobsters (if there were no crayfish).

The dressing remained the same - mayonnaise with French vinegar, Provençal oil and two egg yolks, plus a mysterious sauce from Kabul. At the same time, in the 2000s, some cookbooks recommended preparing a semblance of the famous dish with the remains of any roast: beef, veal, grouse, chicken, and even non-bony types of fish (salmon, trout, sturgeon, for example).

What's happened? Why did a simple salad at that time turn into a spendthrift and a proud one? The explanation is simple. Rapidly developing capitalism in Russia has given birth to home-grown nouveau riche with their craving for excess in food. If it’s caviar, then in buckets, if it’s sterlet, then it’s one and a half arshins long. To please the owners of life - assorted capitalists, rich merchants and smaller trading fry, the new owners of the restaurant that belonged to the unforgettable Olivier made the menu more luxurious, with excesses and ostentatious chic. Further more. They began to lay the food in layers, added truffles, and began to intricately decorate it with chilled lanspeak. The country was in turmoil... And the revolution broke out. That same Russian revolt - senseless, bloody. However, that's not what I'm talking about...

Soviet segment of the biography of Olivier salad. Biography with lyrical digressions

For some time after the October revolution, due to an incomprehensible inertia, pre-revolutionary textbooks and books on bourgeois cooking continued to be printed for some time. They continued to feature “blanquettes made from natural banquet shot hazel grouse” that were absolutely unknown to the proletariat in taste and shape. Until the thirties of the last century, reprinted cookbooks from a bygone era appeared here and there.

And in 1934 we see the birth of a certain Soyuznarpit directory, which (oh horror!) includes our long-time and not at all worker-peasant acquaintance. His proud name was bashfully taken out of brackets and called Game Salad (Olivier). The ingredients are already cut into slices that everyone can understand, they don’t squash too much, and they directly recommend replacing gherkins and pickles with pickled cucumbers. Although the remnants of the former chic in the form of crayfish necks for decoration are still present, liberties are indicated along with them, which are green peas and boiled carrots. There are only a couple of small steps left until the boiled sausage, comrades! Let us omit the sad series of transformations, perversions and substitutions.

By 1951, an impostor began to appear on the pages of chef's textbooks - a certain one. A comparison with False Demetrius immediately suggests itself. Apparently, the fragile student minds could not be traumatized by a foreign combination of letters. Salad decorated with eggs and stripes chicken breast, prepared in all catering outlets - from train stations to the Kremlin. Kabul soybeans have forever given way to “Yuzhny” sauce in it, and prosaic chicken has replaced game birds. A meat analogue of Stolichny was born - all the same ingredients, but with the chicken replaced by any fried, boiled or even stewed meat.

Closer to the seventies (dear to my heart), a painfully familiar, very Soviet, winter, New Year’s version of the recipe began to take shape and conquer boundaries. With boiled Doctor's, canned scarce green peas, a table egg and mayonnaise bought under the counter. In a small glass jar, remember, elders? I just recently gave the same one.

The triumphal procession of “sausage-beautiful” from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok took place during the period of Stagnation...

Covered with valor and glory Olivier of all times

• Boiled sausage.
• Potatoes (boiled in their jackets).
• Boiled carrots.
• Green peas.
• Hard boiled eggs.
• Pickled cucumbers (fresh ones are also possible).
• Mayonnaise Provencal.

All products are simply cut into cubes, without further ado. Crush them in basins big company It’s more convenient with the help of some newfangled gadget. Here vegetable cutters, For example. Simplicity and democracy have returned to normal. Only in accordance with time and place. This is a meeting place that, as we know, cannot be changed. That’s how we began to sculpt tons of it from available components and make friends with families. Associations, memories, aromas, tastes of that salad, namely “Sovdepovsky”, are remembered and honored by millions, its ingredients have not changed for decades. And they are still loved, in spite of or thanks to - add it yourself. As you can see, the Soviet period of the hero’s life is very colorful and long.

The latest trends in the structure and ingredients of Olivier salad: nothing in common with the original source

In the nineties, bad taste reigned in everything, including recipes for famous dishes. How do you like “Olivier” with squid, seasoned with yogurt and avocado puree? In what agitated brain was this incongruity born? Vegetarian Olivier, with shrimp, lobsters, salami and artichokes - just a riot of the imagination of post-Soviet citizens unleashed! But we have what we have. And there is no escape from this. However, it warms the soul that the old proven recipes are gradually coming out of oblivion, according to which one can again cook, if not with bowls, but with crystal salad bowls. I hear objections about upland game. You can even buy it now without leaving the monitor. Of course, I can’t vouch for the “shooting” factor.

Well, I briefly covered the topic. I look forward to your comments. Please subscribe to blog updates - all the most interesting things are yet to come! If you find my humble works interesting, then please share the article on social networks.

Always yours Irina.

Women's logic demanded something with a touch of French chic. Probably the origin of the meter Olivier is to blame...

Quadro Nuevo - Bonjour Juliette