Olivier salad is a real French recipe. Olivier is a multi-component salad dressed with mayonnaise

Russians are idealists and great inventors. Russian Sherlock Holmes is the most sincere of all existing ones, films about cowboys are kind and thoroughly saturated with the Russian spirit, and what can we say about the famous "Three Musketeers" ... Well, can French pedants compare with the charming Boyarsky with a beaming smile. Not only in the cinema, but also in Russian cooking, the same thing happens. Many dishes from foreign cuisines are processed to suit our needs, acquiring a new, and sometimes completely different taste in our conditions. The same thing happened with Olivier salad. The history of Olivier salad is known to few. The famous Olivier salad was invented by a French chef in Russia in the second half of the 19th century, and the name of the famous chef misleads many. However, a fact is a fact. Lucien Olivier is the founder of the famous Hermitage restaurant, as well as the author of a magnificent and still living salad.

The elite restaurant Hermitage was built by Lucien Olivier after many years of living in Moscow, when he realized what was missing in the Russian capital. Not enough french chic. By joining forces with a wealthy merchant Yakov Pegov, Olivier buys a plot in the center of Moscow and intends to build a first-class restaurant according to the best French models. Already by the mid-60s of the 19th century, a chic building with white columns, crystal chandeliers with isolated cabinets and luxurious interiors arose on the site of a booth selling snuff. For Moscow then it was a novelty, and the emerging bourgeoisie poured into the restaurant. At first, Olivier's establishment was called the Tavern in the Russian way, and the waiters were also dressed in the "tavern way". The following facts can tell about the significance and popularity of the restaurant: in 1879, a gala dinner was held in 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 all the then eminent writers and poets. Anniversaries of university professors were celebrated in the Hermitage, students celebrated Tatyana's Day, intellectuals gathered and rich merchants feasted. In general, the restaurant Olivier, as well as its excellent cuisine, attracted the best people of that time.

Lucien Olivier, the youngest of the three Olivier brothers, from whom the history of Olivier salad began, when he was very young, went to work in Moscow. Like many French people, he hoped to apply his culinary skills in a country that had always respected french cuisine. While his brothers were cooking for French gourmets, Lucien was opening his restaurant Hermitage. At first, the business brought a significant income, and the young Frenchman prepared dishes familiar from childhood. This success was greatly facilitated by the "family" recipe-improvement of mayonnaise or mayonnaise. In the early 19th century, the Olivier family began to add mustard to the sauce, as well as several secret spices, which made the taste of the familiar sauce slightly spicy. The popularity of the Olivier family's mayonnaise was so strong that it allowed the older brothers to keep their business in France, and Lucien to open a Moscow "branch" on Trubnaya Square. The building in which the restaurant was located has survived to this day, this is house number 14 on Petrovsky Boulevard, corner of Neglinnaya. So someday a memorial plaque or a whole monument to Olivier Salad may appear on it.

But everything is transient in this world, and gradually sauce alone was not enough for the success of the institution. Its taste quickly became boring, and the changeable fashion swayed towards skinny, pale young ladies, whose beauty, of course, was hindered by appetizing and high-calorie Olivier sauces. It was necessary to urgently come up with something. And then Lucien Olivier came up with new salad, a true work of art. His taste was so refined that it instantly brought the Frenchman the fame of a great chef, and the popularity of his restaurant, which was beginning to fade, flared up with renewed vigor. The visitors named the new salad Olivier Salad, which was quite in the tradition of Russian names. Since then, the name Olivier has become a household name, and they tried to repeat the salad countless times, in the end, simplifying the recipe so much that its modern version is the exact opposite of the original. Many chefs tried to repeat the Olivier recipe, but, not knowing all the ingredients, they inevitably failed - the taste of the real Olivier Salad could only be appreciated in the Hermitage restaurant.

The taste of the famous dish was to a large extent obtained due to Monsieur Olivier's own mayonnaise recipe. It was said that the Frenchman zealously kept the recipe for cooking and the operation for its preparation was carried out in a special room behind a closed door. The path of the sauce was not easy. Initially, Olivier made exactly the sauce called “Game Mayonnaise”. It consisted of boiled fillets of hazel grouse and partridge, laid in layers of jelly from the broth. Along the edges of the dish lay boiled cancer necks And small pieces language. All this was not sweetened big amount homemade Provence sauce. In the center, the structure was decorated with a potato hill with gherkins and slices of boiled eggs, as a decoration. At the same time, the central potato part, according to the author's intention, was intended rather for beauty. One day, Lucien Olivier noticed that some Russians who ordered this dish immediately broke the whole plan, stirring the whole structure with a spoon, and devoured this delicious mass with great appetite. The next day, an enterprising Frenchman mixed all the ingredients and poured thick sauce. This is how the famous salad was born, reborn from an exquisite, but inconvenient “game mayonnaise” into an equally refined, but closer to the Russian soul, “Olivier salad”.

Here is the recipe for the classic “Olivier salad” prepared at the best of times at the Hermitage restaurant (restored in 1904 according to the descriptions of one restaurant regular):

Fillet of two boiled hazel grouses,

One boiled veal tongue,

About 100 grams of pressed black caviar,

200 grams fresh leaves lettuce,

25 boiled crayfish or one large lobster

200-250 grams of small cucumbers,

Half a can of soy kabul (soybean paste),

2 finely chopped fresh cucumbers

100 grams of capers,

5 finely chopped hard boiled eggs

Dressing with Provence sauce: 400 grams olive oil beaten with two fresh egg yolks, French vinegar and mustard.

One of the secrets classic taste Salad Olivier was to add some spices by the Frenchman. The composition of these seasonings, unfortunately, is unknown, so the true taste of the salad can only be imagined according to the descriptions of contemporaries.

The preparation itself was no less exciting:

Fry the hazel grouse in a 1-2 cm layer of oil on a strong flame for 5-10 minutes. Then put them in boiling water or broth (beef or chicken), add 150 ml of Madeira per 850 ml of broth, 10-20 pitted olives, 10-20 small mushrooms and cook for 20-30 minutes for low fire under the lid. When the meat begins to separate slightly from the bones, salt, let it cook for a couple more minutes and turn off the flame. Place the saucepan with the grouse, without pouring out the broth, into a large container with cold water and let cool. The purpose of this is to let the grouse meat cool down gradually. The fact is that when separated in hot form, the meat begins to dry out and loses its tenderness. However, it is necessary not to overdo it and separate the warm meat - do not let the hazel grouse freeze, otherwise it will completely stop being removed from the bones. Wrap the removed meat in foil and place in a cold place. Do not pour out the broth after boiling the mushrooms - it will make a great soup! (if you do not find hazel grouses and decide to replace them with chicken, remember - the chicken must be cut into 2-3 parts and cooked a little longer - 30-40 minutes).

The tongue should be free of fat, lymph nodes, sublingual muscle tissue and mucus. Perhaps half of the language will be enough. Rinse your tongue thoroughly cold water, put it in cold water, bring to a boil and cook over low heat with tightly closed lid 2-4 hours (the time depends on the age of the owner of the language - for a young calf 2 hours will be enough). Half an hour before the tongue is ready, add chopped carrots, parsley root, onion and a piece of bay leaf. Salt 5-10 minutes before the end of cooking. As soon as the tongue is cooked, immediately put it in a container of cold water for 20-30 seconds, then put it on a plate and remove the skin from it (if the tongue still burns your fingers, dip it again in water). After cleaning the tongue, put it back into the broth and quickly bring it to a boil, then turn off the flame and leave the saucepan to cool in a large container filled with ice water. Wrap the cooled tongue in foil and place in a cold place.

Cut the pressed caviar into small cubes.

Wash the lettuce thoroughly, dry and chop just before cooking.

Dip the live crayfish washed in cold water into the boiling solution head down. To prepare a solution for cooking crayfish, take: 25 grams of parsley, onions and carrots, 10 grams of tarragon, 30-40 grams of dill, 1 Bay leaf, a few peas of allspice and 50 grams of salt. After placing the crayfish in boiling water, let the water boil again and cook for another 10 minutes. After turning off the fire, do not take it out immediately, but let the crayfish brew, then cool the pan with ready-made crayfish using the method described above.

Finely chop the pickles right before mixing.

Mash the soybeans before adding them to the salad.

Peel fresh cucumbers and chop finely (not necessarily evenly - you can also “chop”). Finely chop the capers as well, after drying them.

Eggs should be large and fresh. Do not overcook them under any circumstances. Pay close attention to this part. The feeling from the eggs should be fresh, the protein should be tender, not rubbery. Boil for 7-8 minutes, but not 15.

Chop all the ingredients and mix (try to do this carefully, moving from bottom to top). Add homemade mayonnaise and serve immediately. It is also important to take into account the amount of alcohol drunk by the guests. The more, the hotter the sauce should be. If the guests are sober, then it would be more logical to refuel classic mayonnaise, to evaluate delicate taste all ingredients.

This was the recipe when it was reproduced by one of the restaurant's regular customers. Perhaps something was not taken into account, but the main components that are difficult to hide from the sophisticated public are present in the recipe. The secret of the spices that made the taste of the dish special and unique has unfortunately been lost. After the death of Lucien Olivier in 1883, the Hermitage restaurant went to the Olivier Association, for a long time the restaurant passed from hand to hand, and the famous recipe went to the rich houses of the capital, or rather the kitchens of these houses. The personal chefs of many of the richest people in the capital tried to recreate the recipe of the French master and offered this eminent salad at dinner parties. This situation could have lasted forever, if not for the First World War, and then the 1917 revolution. The abrupt disappearance of many products hurt the Olivier salad. At that time, there was no time for frills - for many years the country plunged into the darkness of timelessness, and on the food side - into severe hunger and a rationing system for distributing products. But already in 1924, the era of the New Economic Policy begins and the country again appears, it seemed, irrevocably gone products. However, many things could not be returned. Branded "bourgeois" hazel grouses or cancer necks became inaccessible, and simply irrelevant among the then townspeople. NEP times gave us several options for salad. One of these restaurants, and I must say the central one at that time, since the highest party workers dined there, was the Moscow restaurant. Headed by Ivan Mikhailovich Ivanov. He retained, albeit in a modified form, but close to the original recipe for the famous dish. And the realities of time have made their changes to the recipe.

So, - Olivier salad recipe according to the Moscow restaurant in the mid-20s of the 20th century:

Ingredients:

6 potatoes

2 heads of onions,

3 medium sized carrots

2 pickled cucumbers,

200 grams boiled meat birds,

1 cup green peas

3 boiled eggs

half a cup of olive mayonnaise

salt, pepper to taste.

Cooking:
Vegetables take medium size, fresh. Chop all the ingredients finely and very evenly into equal pieces. Boil potatoes and carrots, peel, chop everything, mix and season with mayonnaise, garnish with parsley and apple slices on top.

In the early 30s, the chef of the Moscow restaurant, Ivan Mikhailovich Ivanov, corrected the recipe of Lucien Olivier according to the time, calling the salad "Capital". This name is not reflected in the book “On tasty and healthy food 1939, but it contains "Game Salad", the recipe of which is strikingly similar to Olivier salad. The “Capital Salad”, which has come down to the 1955 cookbook, has an adapted, but nevertheless close to the original composition.

Salad Capital.

Ingredients:

60 g poultry or game

60 g potatoes

40 g fresh, salted or pickled cucumbers,

10 g green salad,

10 g of cancer necks,

15 g sauce "Southern",

10 g pickles,

10 olives.

Cooking:

Boiled or fried poultry or game, boiled peeled potatoes, fresh, pickled or pickled cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, cut into thin slices (2-2.5 cm each). Finely chop lettuce leaves. Mix everything, season with mayonnaise, add South sauce. Lay the salad in a salad bowl and decorate with mugs or slices of a hard-boiled egg, pieces of pickles, lettuce leaves, mugs fresh cucumbers. On the salad, you can put beautifully sliced ​​\u200b\u200bgame fillets, crayfish necks or pieces canned crabs and olives.

The main principle - to chop everything and season with mayonnaise - has become widespread in the expanses of the Soviet and post-Soviet space, has given rise to many variations on the theme of the famous salad, and modern version Olivier salad is known all over the world as "Russian salad" or "salade a la Russe". Fritillaries were first replaced with partridges, then chicken, and then just sausage. There were also recipes with beef, but this is too hard a component, and the beef did not take root. Crayfish necks, unfortunately, have sunk into oblivion, and in the 20th century they were no longer added to the salad, instead they were added boiled carrots. Capers were replaced with more affordable green peas, onions appeared in the salad, which is why it immediately acquired spicy taste. Salad leaves were replaced with parsley. Soy, veal tongue, as well as pressed black caviar(and truffles, according to one version), also disappeared from the recipe. Ionnaise from home-made was replaced with a factory one. Be that as it may, Olivier salad continued to live even in these difficult conditions, being a symbol of chic and delicacy for a significant part of the impoverished country. In the post-war period, in the second half of the 1950s, when the country experienced strong growth and the standard of living rose again, vintage salad reappeared on the festive table. Many products returned to the market, but even banal peas or Provence mayonnaise were a terrible shortage, and these products were always set aside to create a “holiday” Olivier salad. Simplifying, the Olivier salad recipe acquired the main thing - from quite high-calorie dish, with tasty, but still heavy and expensive components, the salad has moved into the category vegetable salad, the meat share of which was incomparably small.

As in the 19th century, modern salad Olivier is made from those products that are most available at the moment. If then caviar, crayfish tails, hazel grouse and capers were available, now it is boiled sausage, green pea, carrots and onions. And mayonnaise can be bought at the store. Losing expensive ingredients, the salad inevitably gained popularity among the general population of one-sixth of the planet, and now boasts not just a name, but the name of a whole class of salads that began to appear later. Soviet time. After all, the salad canned fish, and from crab sticks, as well as numerous other Soviet salads, appeared thanks to the ingenuity and partly the poverty of the counters, forcing the imagination of housewives and cooks to work. The symbolic significance of Olivier salad for Russian cuisine cannot be overestimated. This is always the main dish on the table, in the best salad bowl, no other salad is honored with such a constancy of presence on the table. festive feast. The tradition of putting food on plates is indicative. Olivier is always put either first or next after the potatoes. This respect for simple salad could not hide from the naked gaze of foreign guests, who, of course, were also treated to Olivier salad. Throughout the rest of the world, our salad is known as "Russian salad", but it is most correct to call the modern version of the dish "Soviet Olivier". Like "Soviet champagne" it has its own fate, its own unforgettable taste and is considered the same powerful and indestructible symbol of the holiday.

Leaf lettuce is one of the vegetable crops. In ancient times wild lettuce cultivated in ancient Egypt. A little later, lettuce leaves were eaten in Ancient Greece, being sure that they will improve digestion and promote sound sleep. So what is more from leaf lettuce - harm or benefit?

On the territory of Russia, salad appeared only in the 18th century, but for a long time it was not very popular. And even now, many people are convinced that its role is purely decorative, but ... The benefits of leaf lettuce for the human body are invaluable, since these green leaves contain a lot useful substances, and the culture itself is dietary.

Leaf lettuce can be bought in the markets and in the vegetable department of the supermarket. Fresh lettuce (many of its varieties are known - arugula, romano, frisse, iceberg, lettuce) should not be stored for more than a week. He will be comfortable on the lower shelves of the refrigerator, where the temperature is higher than on the top. To choose a high-quality bunch of greens, you must adhere to the following rules:

- the plant should be monophonic, it should not have spots or blotches;

- leaves during a superficial examination should not contain signs that the leaves are eaten away or torn (this is a clear indication of the inadequate quality of the goods presented);

- purchase exclusively dry salad - in the market, sellers can sprinkle the leaves with water so that they retain their presentation all day; it is necessary to eat such greens immediately - in the refrigerator it will last for several hours at most.

What's in lettuce?

Leaf lettuce, the benefits of which will be discussed a lot more, is the leader in calcium content. According to experts, even cottage cheese and milk are not much ahead of him.

There is also vitamin K in this vegetable crop, which affects the proper blood clotting.

It is quite difficult to get manganese from other products, and in a salad there is not only a lot of it, but the body is able to absorb manganese in full.

Nutritional value and calorie content of leaf lettuce

Leaf lettuce is low calorie and dietary product. The calorie content of 100 grams is in the range from 14 to 25 kilocalories. One small bunch weighs about 250 grams, and one medium branch about ten.

The nutritional value of lettuce is as follows: one and a half grams of protein, two tenths - fat and two grams of carbohydrates. Water accounts for 94 grams, the rest is dietary fiber, mono- and disaccharides.

Useful properties of leaf lettuce

This plant is a natural neuronal stimulant. Salad may well serve as a substitute for chocolate or other sweets during great mental stress, enriching brain cells with oxygen and nourishing them with useful substances.

Vegetable culture can regular use, slightly reduce the amount of cholesterol, reduce the likelihood of developing heart attacks, strokes, help in cleaning blood vessels.

The vegetable crop contains magnesium, which can have a positive effect in strengthening nervous system person. Magnesium can calm down, and also suspend or even prevent the development of nerve diseases.

Due to the fact that the composition of lettuce leaves contains special substances that have a sedative effect on the body (their action is similar to the action of alkaloids), then when frequent use lettuce blocking of nervous activators occurs. This is how you deal with insomnia.

Greens will be useful in season colds helping to strengthen the immune system and assisting in the recovery of the body. In addition, lettuce has mucus-thinning and expectorant sputum properties from the bronchi.

Lettuce leaves will improve digestion, speed up the exchange of lipids and fats, help to digest in the intestines nutrients, remove toxins and toxins, release bad cholesterol.

If you constantly add vegetable crop in your diet, it will be a good prevention of cancer.

The juice of this plant can slightly improve blood composition, lower sugar levels and be useful for anemia. Lettuce will strengthen the vessels, which will become more elastic over time.

Vitamin A in tandem with potassium can improve hair and skin health.

Carotenoids and iodine slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease and support visual function.

Leaf lettuce: benefits for women

It should be noted the benefits of salad for women due to the content in it folic acid, which will help future mothers regulate hormonal balance and will help restore childbearing function. The likelihood of miscarriage or premature birth is somewhat reduced.

An aqueous infusion on the seeds of this lettuce will increase lactation and improve the quality breast milk. Thanks to calcium, lettuce will help in the formation of healthy muscle and bone tissue.

Such a plant is very useful to add to the food of future mothers, because it will help to make the intrauterine development of the crumbs full.

The benefits of leaf lettuce: cosmetic recipes

Women different ages have been used for a long time green salad in order to maintain the beauty of the skin and curls. Beneficial effect leaf lettuce for the face is as follows. In ordinary cosmetic masks used by many women, it is useful to add crushed leaves to saturate the skin with life-giving moisture. Over time, the appearance will undergo slight changes: the skin will become more elastic and velvety.

If the female face is no longer so fresh, and peeling processes begin, the following composition will help:

- grind seven or ten lettuce leaves;

- add three tablespoons of cream, curdled milk or sour cream.

Mix all ingredients well.

The time for which the mask should work is a quarter of an hour.

The benefits of leaf lettuce should be remembered when you want to increase skin elasticity. The composition is prepared as follows:

- three to four tablespoons of gruel from the leaves;

- a teaspoon of lemon juice;

- a tablespoon of olive or corn oil.

Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

On the face, such a mask should be about twenty minutes.

What are the benefits of leaf lettuce in the process of losing weight?

Many girls and women quite often think about how to lose weight. overweight, turning from "dumpling" to "thin". In this they will be assisted by the same leaf salad due to its fiber content. It is fiber that burns fat accumulations, perfectly fights constipation attacks, stimulates intestinal motility, improves digestion and cleanses the intestines in a very gentle form.

A dish that contains leaf lettuce allows women to feel full for a long time. It is the salad that is a recognized natural diuretic, helping to get rid of excess fluid and toxins. This quality is very important for people seeking to lose weight. If you combine the juices of beets, carrots and lettuce (in equal proportions), not only the body, but also the blood will be cleansed of toxins.

Two words on the culinary theme. If you need to add lettuce leaves to a dish, you do not need to cut them with a knife. Leaves are torn by hand. The dressing is added just before serving the dish.

To neutralize the bitterness of arugula or salads - mustard and oak - they are pre-soaked in salted water for ten minutes. During the preparation of salads for weight loss, you can add some nuts to them, which are combined with leafy vegetables. Vegetable oils, yogurt or sour cream are suitable as dressings.

The benefits of leaf lettuce for men

The presence of vitamins belonging to group B in leaf lettuce will strengthen male body in general, but their lack will provoke insomnia, irritability, numbness of the limbs, the man will quickly get tired.

Doctor's advice. If there is a feeling of nervousness, restlessness or a drop in energy, you should include dishes containing fresh leaf lettuce in your menu. It goes well with fish, shrimp, nuts, fermented milk products and greenery.

The positive qualities of this leaf culture are appreciated by athletes, because with the help of lettuce, the negative symptoms that occur after heavy loads are slightly smoothed out.

Salad improves hair growth. Medicinal properties“curly” doctors are that a tincture of lettuce leaves can penetrate quite deeply into the epidermis, where it will nourish the hair roots well; in addition, the ability to restore cells that were previously damaged is preserved.

How can leaf lettuce harm human health?

Before you include lettuce leaves in your menu, the benefits and harms of it for the body of each person must be adequately assessed. In one case, thanks to leafy vegetables, a therapeutic effect will be obtained, and in the other, a deterioration in the functioning of the body will be provoked.

Salad greens contain a lot of oxalic acid. It is she who will cause harm in the presence of diseases Bladder or kidneys.

Doctor's advice. You should not use leaf lettuce (which, unfortunately, also has harm) for food for those patients whose body is prone to increased gas formation, that is, flatulence.

The norm of the use of leaf lettuce

According to the advice of doctors, at least one hundred grams of this leafy vegetable should be eaten per day. For example, this is how much one large bunch or two glasses of chopped vegetables will weigh.

Pediatricians are allowed to introduce lettuce leaves into the children's diet after the baby is one and a half to two years old.

If you offer leaf lettuce for food to children, it should be borne in mind that until the child has reached the age of 12, the portion must be halved.

Today is Friday again, and again the guests are in the studio, spinning the drum and guessing the letters. The next issue of the capital show Field of Miracles is on the air and here is one of the questions in the game:

What disappeared from the original Olivier salad recipe? 6 letters

Correct answer - GROUSE

By the way, interesting history of olivier salad.
For the first time, the Olivier salad recipe was published in the book by P. P. Alexandrova “A Guide to Learning the Basics culinary arts» 1897 edition:
Olivier salad
Required products and their proportion per person.
Fritillaries - half a piece. Potatoes - 3 pieces. Cucumbers - 1 piece. Salad - 3-4 sheets. Provence - 1.5 table. spoons. Cancer necks - 3 pieces. Lanspic - a quarter of a glass. Kaporza - 1 teaspoon. Olives - 3-5 pieces.
Cooking rules: Cut the fillet of fried good hazel grouse into blankets and mix with boiled, not crumbly potato blankets and slices of fresh cucumbers, add caporets and olives and pour over a large amount of Provencal sauce, with the addition of soy-kabul. After cooling, transfer to a crystal vase, remove with crayfish tails, lettuce leaves and chopped lanspic. Serve very cold. Fresh cucumbers can be replaced with large gherkins. Instead of hazel grouse, you can take veal, partridge and chicken, but the real Olivier appetizer is prepared without fail from hazel grouse.

The exact recipe of Lucien Olivier was a secret that he took with him to the grave (buried at the Vvedensky cemetery in Moscow, in 2008 his grave was restored).
According to some reports, the original salad recipe is as follows: 2 hazel grouse, veal tongue, a quarter pound of pressed caviar, half a pound of fresh lettuce, 25 pieces of boiled crayfish, half a can of pickles, half a can of soy kabul, two fresh cucumbers, a quarter of a pound of capers, 5 hard-boiled eggs.
For the sauce: Provence mayonnaise should be made in French vinegar with 2 eggs and 1 pound of Provence (olive) oil.

Olivier salad was invented by the Frenchman Lucien Olivier, who was in Moscow in the early 60s of the XIX century, co-owner and chef of the restaurant Parisian cuisine"Hermitage Museum". Abroad, the salad is known as "Russian salad". In Russia, Olivier is often called "meat salad".

V. A. Gilyarovsky in the book “Moscow and Muscovites” in the chapter “On the Trumpet” recalled: “It was considered a special chic when dinners were prepared by the French chef Olivier, who even then became famous for his “Olivier salad”, invented by him, without which lunch is not at lunch and whose secret he did not reveal. No matter how hard the gourmets tried, it didn’t work out: this, but not that. ”

Unfortunately, Lucien Olivier took the secret of his salad recipe to the grave! Therefore, what is now commonly called Olivier salad is, in fact, not such! Only the general idea of ​​making this salad was used, but it still usually turns out very tasty!

Necessary products and their proportion per person.

Fritillaries - ½ pieces. Potatoes - 3 pieces. Cucumbers - 1 piece. Salad - 3-4 sheets. Provence - 1½ table. spoons. Cancer necks - 3 pieces. Lanspic - ¼ cup. Capers - 1 teaspoon. Olives - 3-5 pieces.

Cooking rules: Cut the fillet of fried good hazel grouse into blankets and mix with boiled, not crumbly potato blankets and slices of fresh cucumbers, add capers and olives and pour over a large amount of Provencal sauce, with the addition of soy kabul.

After cooling, transfer to a crystal vase, arrange with crayfish necks, lettuce leaves and chopped lanspic. Serve very cold. Fresh cucumbers can be replaced with large gherkins.

Instead of hazel grouse, you can take veal, partridge and chicken, but the real appetizer Olivier is prepared without fail from hazel grouse.

According to some reports, the original salad recipe is as follows: 2 hazel grouse, veal tongue, a quarter pound of pressed caviar, half a pound of fresh lettuce, 25 pieces of boiled crayfish, half a can of pickles, half a can of soy kabul, two fresh cucumbers, a quarter of a pound of capers, 5 hard-boiled eggs.

For the sauce: Provence mayonnaise should be made in French vinegar with 2 eggs and 1 pound of Provence (olive) oil.

In Soviet times, Olivier salad recipes were repeatedly changed, some ingredients were replaced by others, cheaper and more affordable. A standard Soviet Olivier consisted of 6 or 8 ingredients:

• boiled potatoes;
• boiled carrots;
• boiled sausage ("Doctor's");
• hard boiled eggs;
• salted (pickled) cucumbers;
• green peas (canned);
• mayonnaise;
• dill

Everything was cut into cubes, mixed and seasoned with mayonnaise. The ease of preparation and the availability of ingredients have made this salad extremely popular dish during the Soviet years.

Olivier was an indispensable attribute of the Soviet festive table for the New Year.

Another name for the modern recipe for this salad - "Winter" - arose from the fact that its ingredients are easily available in winter time unlike the ingredients of "summer" salads.

During the years of perestroika, changes took place in the Soviet recipe: they began to replace sausage with boiled meat, and apples and fresh cucumbers became possible as an option. The variant with chicken instead of beef got a name "Capital salad".

And here is the opinion of the chef of a large restaurant about the Olivier salad:

The original salad recipe has changed significantly over more than a hundred years, but it erased all boundaries and became popular. Olivier is cooked from Siberia to the USA and often argue about what should be right salad- a symbol of the New Year.

When did the Olivier salad originate?

Olivier is an old invention, over a hundred years old. During this time, the salad recipe has changed a lot. No wonder, during this time in Russia itself, several regimes have changed. In the tsarist period, even the salad looked royal.

The pre-revolutionary recipe included two hazel grouse, veal tongue, a quarter pound of pressed caviar, half a pound of fresh lettuce leaves, crayfish necks (25 pieces), half a can of pickles (a mixture of small canned vegetables), two fresh cucumbers, a quarter pound of capers and five hard-boiled eggs.

The salad dressing was made with two eggs and a pound of olive oil, French vinegar. The trouble is that the recipe was restored in an approximate version - the author kept it a secret.

French chef Lucien Olivier. He came to Russia in the 19th century and became a successful restaurateur. Lucien Olivier was a great cook, knew a lot about food. He was a co-owner of the Hermitage Moscow restaurant, where they also came for the sake of a signature salad named after the chef.

Mr. Olivier took the secret of the recipe with him to the grave. He is buried in Moscow at the Vvedensky cemetery.

- Why did capers, crayfish tails and caviar disappear from Olivier?

Not all dishes can boast such vitality as Olivier salad. He managed to survive during the revolution, go through the socialist system and not disappear under capitalism.

The most difficult period in Olivier's life was socialism, when the dish was deprived of expensive products, because they became scarce.

Crayfish necks, red or black caviar, the tongue still somehow flashed, but about the existence of capers and French wine vinegar generally forgotten.

Can Provencal sauce be made at home?

Nowadays, many complain about the poor selection of products in stores, and I partly agree with this. However, if you try, you can find everything you need, including good wine vinegar.

And for classic sauce Provence we need egg yolks, olive oil, salt, pepper, some mustard and vinegar. In the end, you can play with vinegar: both wine and apple will do, depending on which flavors you prefer.

- What about the recipe?

Since the time of Lucien Olivier, the salad recipe has lost its backbone, but it has not ceased to be itself. So you can cook at least according to the royal, even according to the Soviet recipe.

The only thing that unites original version and all subsequent ones are Provencal sauce. All Olivier salads are correct. It would seem a paradox, but it is true.

Olivier allows the author's interpretation. You can cook it with chicken, tongue, green peas, crayfish necks or red caviar. Some insist on the presence of a green apple or carrot in the salad, someone puts red peppers or even onions.

- And how do you feel about onions in Olivier?

Very positive. If possible, I will definitely put onions. Guests are asked not to put onions in Olivier, not because it is tasteless, but simply because they are afraid of the smell.

Onions make Olivier sweet and spicy, especially Crimean, however, this dish can hardly spoil anything.

For the freedom of choice of ingredients and the eternal possibility of searching, this salad is respected all over the world - in the USA, Canada, France, Germany, where it is called "Russian salad".

Foreigners do not always understand our tradition of making Russian Salad, they are interested in where the orange slices or pineapple pieces are, but at the same time they are happy to eat Olivier in our way and are surprised at its versatility.

- Do you have a favorite recipe?

I like two ideas - meat and sea, so we have two different Oliviers on the menu. The first salad is relatively simple, with mushrooms and tongue, and the second one is with flying fish caviar, marinated salmon and scallop.

The basis is clear - boiled potatoes and carrots, hard-boiled eggs, young peas, pickled cucumbers, Provence mayonnaise. We are preparing it classic recipe, but for charm we add Philadelphia cheese and flying fish caviar. It's already getting interesting.

And then we mix everything, put it in nice shape, decorate with salmon slices and scallop fried in sesame and lemongrass.

So don't be afraid to experiment and create your signature Olivier salad!

Here is additional information to help you improve your Olivier salad:

Olivier royally. What was used to prepare the most popular salad Russians?
(Article from the newspaper Arguments and Facts Weekly No. 47 18/11/2015)

Olivier salad is considered festive and New Year's. In Soviet times, Olivier salad recipes were shuffled like playing cards: some ingredients were replaced by others that were cheaper and more accessible.

The ease of preparation and the availability of ingredients made Olivier an extremely popular dish in the Soviet years. Everyone knows the "communist" recipe.

It is much more difficult to establish the composition of the salad, which was invented in the 1860s in Moscow, on Trubnaya Square, in house No. 14 on Petrovsky Boulevard. Lucien Olivier, the creator of the salad, is said to have taken the recipe with him to his grave.

Secret Ingredient

So, first there was a salad that was invented by the French chef Olivier, one of the owners of the Hermitage restaurant. Very soon, Muscovites began to call this dish by the name of the owner, despite the fact that Olivier himself called it "Mayonnaise from the game."

They say that the main secret amazing taste of the salad was a small amount of certain seasonings that Olivier personally added to his mayonnaise in a secret room.

It was the composition of these spices that could not be reliably restored. Well, the rest of the products included in the salad were in full view, so special secret did not represent.

In 1899, Pelageya Aleksandrova-Ignatieva, a teacher of culinary arts at the Imperial Women's Patriotic Society, published the book "Practical Foundations of Culinary Art".

Among the list of recipes, it also includes Olivier salad. If a modern housewife reads recommendations from the 19th century and correlates them with her family budget, she will not believe her eyes and calculations.

Revival of the recipe

rebirth legendary salad called "Capital" took place in the thirties of the XX century in a restaurant with the same name, whose chefs may have remembered the taste of the "real" Olivier.

Connoisseurs of haute cuisine who survived by that time claimed that this salad did not differ much in taste from its famous predecessor.

And in the "Book of Tasty and Healthy Food", which was published in 1939 and became the first large cookbook of the entire USSR, you can find a recipe for Olivier salad called "Game Salad".

In the end, the salad disappeared from the pages of cookbooks and restaurant kitchens.

And now the most common composition of the dish, which you will be treated to in almost any home, includes six ingredients: boiled potatoes, hard boiled eggs, boiled sausage or meat, salted, fresh or pickled cucumbers, green peas, mayonnaise.

A question of price

So, let's calculate how much it will cost the Kurians Olivier to festive table both in the classic and in the traditional Soviet recipe. Let's start with the "anti-crisis" recipe.

Half a kilo boiled sausage in Kursk it costs 180 rubles, a dozen eggs on average - 60 rubles, 400 grams of mayonnaise - 50 rubles, peas - 60 rubles, a can of cucumbers - 80 rubles, a kilogram of potatoes - 15 rubles, a kilogram of carrots - 20 rubles.

So, let's sum up. Kuryans have to spend about 465 rubles to prepare their favorite salad.

What about the classic Olivier salad, whose recipe was restored in 1904?

Grouse cost about 750 rubles, the tongue can be found for 350 rubles. Boiled and frozen crayfish tails will cost the hostess 1,000 rubles, black pressed caviar - all 5,000 rubles, another thousand will be spent on making the sauce and lanspic, and the same amount will have to be spent on other ingredients.

Bottom line: a gourmet will have to spend more than 9,000 rubles on a classic salad.

Of course, the preparation of this salad requires the purchase of many raw materials and is quite laborious outside of a restaurant kitchen, so it is unlikely to become regular dish your his home table but for a holiday, especially in new year's eve, he can become crown
dish.

Here is a modern unusual recipe Salad Olivier:

OLIVIER WITH SHRIMP AND GREEN TOBIKO

Ingredients:

• fresh cucumbers - 50 g and 5 g for decoration
• fresh peas - 50 g
• boiled potatoes - 50 g
• radish - 30 g
• boiled carrots - 50 g
• chicken egg - 50 g
• quail egg - 20 g
• shrimp - 40 g
• celery leaves - 15 g
• tobiko caviar - 10 g
• wasabi sauce - 5 g
• homemade mayonnaise - 10 g

Cooking method:

Cut cucumbers, potatoes, chicken eggs and carrots into cubes, add peas, mix all the ingredients. Prepare the salad dressing: To do this, mix mayonnaise, tobiko caviar and wasabi. Shrimps fry in a mixture of olive and garlic oil. Dress the salad, put on a plate through the mold. Top with shrimp, celery leaves, thinly sliced ​​radish and cucumber.

I bring up-to-date extensive information about Olivier:

Grated apple: the great battle for Olivier

AUTHOR SASHA SUTORMINA

Kilograms of hard-boiled eggs, tons of mayonnaise, doctor's sausage, chicken, tongue, jars of peas and the smell of boiled carrots mixed with the sounds of "Irony of Fate" from the TV - we see such a picture in all the kitchens of the country from year to year. From early childhood.

Should I add grated apple? Cut finely or heartily? Are pickled cucumbers allowed? Chicken or sausage? Do you put in potatoes? Battles on this topic have been waged by housewives for decades. The main ingredient of the era of scarcity remained unchanged: His Majesty mayonnaise (or simply “majanesic”). So satisfying (well, or calling a spade a spade, greedy) - and it’s easy to hide the flaws of the kitchen. In an information vacuum and in the absence of normal products, disputes brought sparkle to the New Year's table along with the program "Blue Light".

Times have changed, on these very New Year's tables hitherto unseen luxuries began to appear. Overseas delicacies (cheeses! fishes! hams! sausages!).

The central place of Olivier on the table of a self-respecting family has become more of a tribute to tradition. Has the position of the "Olivier" squabbles changed in the hierarchy of waiting for a New Year's miracle? Not at all.

Truly Italian passions flared up on the burning topics of slicing potatoes and the amount of sauce starting with the letter “m”. Oh, this self-giving, oh, this fire in the eyes, oh, these epithets.

“And I will not sit down at the table with a man who adds to Olivier fresh peas. Or capers. I won’t even perch on the corner, ”would we be surprised to hear this closer to mid-December from an apparently adequate colleague in the office canteen?

On the contrary, we will be offended and run to the wardrobe in search of warm mittens. Throw with a swing in the face of a scoundrel. Duel, only duel! We shoot capers at ten paces. Seconds will contact you at whatsapp.

The return to the shelves of prodigal cancer necks and hazel grouse, by the way, gave another direction of controversy. Olivier True, Exquisite met in an unequal struggle with Olivier Sovkov, Poor.

Lucien, our Olivier from the restaurant, was also called as a witness. "Hermitage Museum", spinning in a coffin for the last decades, like a squirrel in a wheel.

Salad in its original form and invented - with hazel grouse, pressed caviar, fresh lettuce, crayfish, lanspic and the mysterious soy kabul, which cannot be repeated due to the lack of a recipe. No. All not recorded.

You're on your own somehow. And we ourselves - just give us a reason to take time in the hot New Year's Eve season. Don't work after all. Don't create.

Digging through the sources of the late nineteenth century, available on the Internet of the twenty-first century, poking at the monitor screen with links of negligent Soviets, waving your hand in impotence - let them, let them!

Yes, let them bathe in their mayonnaise, dark, inquisitive little people, devoid of any sense of taste.

Having got rid of the deficit, we began to travel. And what? The first timid trips to the Turkish shores with their alluring all-inclusiveness and awkward forays into Europe on short-term pre-Schengen visas brought new surprises.

This one, mayonnaise, with potatoes and yesterday's vegetables, boiled until mashed al dente, is called "russian salad" (also known as "ensalada russa", also known as "salade russe")? Oh. That's what they think of us. Such have us, means, staples. It's clear. Well, let's be proud.

The other side was equally surprised. Holders of passports of the Italian and French Republics, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United States of America, issued to our lands by the restaurateurs of the first wave, discovered with amazement the essence of the salad O.

Adrian Ketglas, chief of the Moscow Adri, AQ Kitchen and other beautiful ones, who worked in another reality in Doce Uvas on Prechistenskaya Embankment, I recalled at my request a week ago how I ordered Olivier salad on one of my first trips to a Moscow luxury plus plus restaurant.

“You understand ... and I sit, waiting for a miracle ... and they bring me ... ensalada russa. And here in Spain it's the top ten tapas. Along with patatas bravas and croquettes. We have, however, instead of sausage tuna from a can. The filth is terrible.

It didn't happen to me anymore. Olivie? No, no, no, sorry guys." An inquisitive Spaniard after that experience studied the issue - and paid tribute to the True Olivier in full.

Inspired by Lucien Olivier's recipe, Adrian prepared this salad at a culinary congress in San Sebastian eight years ago - and even gave a lecture about it. Author's versions of the Russian holy grail - with venison, with fish and completely without "Provencal" - Ketglas offers in its restaurants.

Salad "Olivier"

So William Lamberti (William’s, Northerners, Pinch and others) shares that he has tried many times in other countries the dubious look and taste of “Russian salad” seasoned with sour sauce.

In Russia, however, he liked it. And with beef tongue, and with chicken, and with sausage. All is well, all is well. Only now canned peas could not understand. Tradition, apparently, says so among you, the Russians. And traditions must be honored.

Foreigners are foreigners, and disputes born in the USSR did not stop - from year to year, from season to season. They do not subside to this day. Social media has taken battle to the next level. Blood is shed, mostly from the eyes.

Yesterday's friends from December to December are removed from friends and put blocks. Branches of four hundred comments are not uncommon. Battles about cucumbers and a doctoral thesis are sharper than during Navalny's election campaign, during the trial of Pussy Riot and annexation of Crimea. What policy? After all, there is Olivier.

Arrived in time for the current December cold and the fattest, freshest, most expensive - in the collection of ready-to-wear gastroscandals of the winter 2016-2017 season - a dispute about the Soviet feast.

At different ends of the ring - Ivan Shishkin and the sun of modern Russian literature and a gastro-blogger with a portfolio more impressive than our whole life - Tatyana Nikitichna Tolstaya.

Rounds: aspic, mimosa, sprats, herring under a fur coat and even tangerines. They threw themselves, as usual, at the fan. Affected and "Olivier". Fine cut or coarse? Do you put in potatoes? Well, you understand. See above.

And what about our bosses? What are luminaries? What are innovators? What are young and greyhounds? “Calm down, calm down,” they say. Do not make a cult out of lettuce. Here is the main character of Russian gastronomy - White Rabbit chef Vladimir Mukhin, we quote: “Olivier was never cooked at my house - it was not accepted. Perhaps the only place where I eat Olivier is Coffeemania at the airport. Just because there's nothing else to eat."

Mukhin prepared his recipe for Kutuzovskiy5, and swears that one billionaire cried over a plate of happiness. Tears of gastronomic catharsis streamed down the cheeks of the oligarch from a properly boiled carrot.

So Andrey Makhov, the chef of Café Pouchkine, the most important restaurant in Russian tourist cuisine, is philosophizing - so many people, so many Olivier recipes. In "Pushkin" they restored in general terms according to the old cookbooks. Warlocks!

Here is Mark Statsenko from Funny Cabany, Chicken Run and Spices:

“The real Olivier is the author's. Everyone cooks in their own way and has every right to do so. In Tsarist Russia, Olivier was prepared with goose, smoked ham, and various fish. To be honest, I did not find these times, so I love the simple and understandable interpretation of Olivier - with boiled farm chicken, young green peas, homemade homemade mayonnaise and pickles". At Funny, he cooks a funny version with popcorn and crab.

And what is left for us? To those who found the era of shortages and who has mayonnaise flowing through their veins from the thirty-first to the third?

Or, on the contrary, those who Olivier ate a couple of times in his life on the new year with his grandmother and in the university cafeteria - who will festive dinner rather from risotto with oysters, prosciutto, quinoa with asparagus and rare steaks? Relax and enjoy. From near-salad battles, as a national pastime, or from delicious food.

And I will raise a glass of champagne to my friend Olivier Sauvage, now living in Kazakhstan, Olivier, whom we, his Russian-speaking friends, among ourselves called exclusively “Mad Salad” (after all, “sauvage” in French means “wild”). Olivier, I'm sorry, I was going to tell you earlier.

Expert advice

Vladimir Mukhin chef White Rabbit Family

“There are three secrets in the Olivier salad in its “Soviet” interpretation: properly cooked vegetables, the correct ratio of ingredients and cutting.

Tongue, jacket potatoes, carrots, fresh and pickled cucumbers, eggs, fresh-frozen peas, homemade mayonnaise, always with the addition of mustard.

Cut into small cubes, the size of a pea. I won’t say the exact amount, I never weighed it - everything is by eye, as with mincemeat. Can you add more green apple- again, as with forshmak.

William Lamberti - Brand Chef

In my opinion, all these disputes about Olivier do not make much sense: everyone cooks the way he tastes best, according to the recipe that has been passed down from generation to generation in his family for many years.

But a very important point is mayonnaise. I advise everyone, no matter what kind of Olivier you cook (whether with doctor's sausage or crayfish tails), use homemade mayonnaise. It takes quite a bit of time, but it turns out really tasty and much healthier!

When I lived in France, I noticed that they always add a little mustard to mayonnaise, but not very spicy and bitter. And to make the taste of the sauce more interesting, you should add a little olive oil.

To make mayonnaise you will need:

• 4 yolks
• 1 st. l. mustard (preferably Dijon)
• 0.5 st. l. salt
• 3 art. l. lemon juice
• 500 ml olive oil

In a deep bowl, beat the yolks with mustard.

While continuing to whisk, begin to gently pour the olive oil into the bowl in a thin stream. Add slowly so that the mass becomes homogeneous and mixes easily.

Pour another 250 ml of oil into the mixture and add lemon juice and salt.

Continue adding the remaining oil (maybe a little bolder).

Transfer the finished mayonnaise to a glass container, close the lid and refrigerate for a couple of hours.

Tatyana Tolstaya (LJ recipe)

If you really want to get delicious olivier, do not strive for any historical accuracy, but follow a few basic rules:

1) do not put potatoes in it;

2) cut all products finely, if possible under the size of peas;

3) do not spare eggs and well-boiled carrots;

4) cucumbers should be barreled, folk, and pickled - fu. I understand that it will be difficult for emigrants, but then look for canned unsweetened cucumbers with a minimum of vinegar.

Here is an example of the beautiful Olivier:

Cook a good chicken over low heat, do not overcook. There will still be broth. Cook like this: chicken, two onions, four carrots, two stalks of celery, salt at the end. And who wants to - salt first.

When it cools down a bit, disassemble into meat-bones and cut into smaller pieces.

Cut the carrots too, and if it is not enough, then cook more carrots separately.

Four hard boiled eggs crumble.

A medium-sized jar of peas, drain the water. Be sure to check that the peas are not rough.

Pieces of 4-5 barreled pickles, without peel, finely chopped. Pickled cucumbers are not good.

Finely chop more cilantro.

Half a big apple better than Antonovka, as small as possible. You can use any sour apple.

That's all. If you don't want chicken, you can use meat (beef). I thought of a doctor's sausage - and the sausage will do, although it is not the same, oh, not the same! I wanted to add a tablespoon of capers - to health. Shmatok sauerkraut, finely chopped - you are welcome.

A handful of salted or pickled mushrooms - and that's fine. Moreover, if you don't mind fresh cucumber in winter - and it to the heap. How much to put - approximately I wrote, but ideally you need to try and add to balance both salinity, sweetness, and softness. Salt is not necessary, cucumbers will do it.

Now the most important thing, refueling. You can stupidly fill with purchased mayonnaise, you can - who is so dexterous - make mayonnaise yourself, I am not responsible for salmonella, but it is best to do this:

Squeeze the juice of two lemons
- To extinguish the acidity of the lemon with two tablespoons of sugar (approximately),
- Put 100 grams of sour cream,
- Nearly double this amount with good store-bought mayonnaise. If you don't want to, keep mixing lemon, sugar and sour cream, but then you can add a pinch of salt.

I beg you, refrain, do not put potatoes.

And I repeat once again: I beg you, refrain, do not put potatoes. Potatoes will drown everything out.

Andrian Ketglas — Brand Chef Ardi BBQ, AQ Kitchen, AQ Chicken

Ingredients:

• Kneli
• Boiled potatoes - 30g
• Pickled cucumbers - 20 g
• Boiled egg - 20 g
• Smoked chicken - 15 g
• Boiled chicken fillet - 40 g
• Canned green peas - 10 g
• Mayonnaise - 30 g
• Ketchup - 5 g

Endive vase:

• Endive salad (or any other salad) - 40 g
• Fresh cucumbers - 50 g
• Boiled tongue - 15 g
• Pickled gherkins - 15 g
• Fried grouse - 25 g
• Boiled quail egg - 15 g
• Mayonnaise - 30 g
• Ground paprika - 1 g

For decoration:

• Crayfish - 3 pcs
• Capers - 5g
• Dill - 3g
• Black caviar - 5g

Cooking method

Salad "Olivier" in our interpretation consists of two parts - traditional Soviet and true noble.

First: the traditional part. Make three small quenelles from the "homemade" salad "Olivie"(with the addition of chopped thin pieces boiled chicken breast, smoked chicken and spicy tomato sauce - ketchup.

The second: according to the recipe, close to the description of 1895.

From the leaves of the endive lettuce, collect a vase, put cucumbers, boiled tongue, gherkins, fried hazel grouse, boiled eggs alternately cut into foals (flat straws), boiled eggs, pour generously with mayonnaise and sprinkle with paprika. Decorate the salad with boiled crayfish, capers, dill, black caviar and chicken lanspic (chicken broth jelly).

Mark Statsenko — Brand Chef at Funny Cabany, Chicken Run and Spices

Ingredients:

• Radish - 20 g
• Boiled potatoes - 100 g
• Boiled carrots - 60 g
• Green peas - 45 g
• Lightly salted cucumbers - 45 g
• Boiled chicken egg - 1 pc.
• Coarse wheat flour - 25 g
• Breadcrumbs - 25 g
• Crab meat - 100 g

Dijon mustard - 1.5 tsp

• Chicken yolks - 3 pcs
• Freshly squeezed lemon juice - 1.5 tbsp. l.
• Vegetable oil - 150 g
• Olive oil - 50 g
• Parsley (to taste)
• Salt (a pinch)
• Pepper (pinch)

Cooking method:

1. Cut all vegetables and crab meat into medium cubes, radishes - thinly.

2. For mayonnaise, combine chicken yolks with mustard, freshly squeezed lemon juice, vegetable and olive oil, salt and pepper.

3. Peel the egg boiled for five minutes, brush with yolk and roll in flour, then in breadcrumbs and then deep-fry for a few minutes.

4. Mix ready salad with homemade mayonnaise and chopped herbs.​

Go ahead and create your own Olivier salad recipe!

I bring Additional information about the Olivier salad:

Lucien Olivier, the youngest of the three Olivier brothers, being quite young, went to work in Moscow. Like many French people, he hoped to apply his culinary skills in a country that had always respected French cuisine.

While his brothers were cooking for French gourmets, Lucien was opening his restaurant Hermitage. At first, the business brought a significant income, and the young Frenchman prepared dishes familiar from childhood.

This success was greatly facilitated by the "family" recipe-improvement of mayonnaise or mayonnaise. In the early 19th century, the Olivier family began to add mustard to the sauce, as well as several secret spices, which made the taste of the familiar sauce slightly spicy.

The popularity of the Olivier family's mayonnaise was so strong that it allowed the older brothers to keep their business in France, and Lucien to open a Moscow "branch" on Trubnaya Square.

The building in which the restaurant was located has survived to this day, this is house number 14 on Petrovsky Boulevard, corner of Neglinnaya. So someday a memorial plaque or a whole monument to Olivier Salad may appear on it.

As some have noticed, the photo leaves many questions about its ownership. But I haven't found another yet...

But everything is transient in this world, and gradually sauce alone was not enough for the success of the institution. Its taste quickly became boring, and the changeable fashion swayed towards skinny, pale young ladies, whose beauty, of course, was hindered by appetizing and high-calorie Olivier sauces.

It was necessary to urgently come up with something. And then Lucien Olivier came up with a new salad, a true work of art. His taste was so refined that it instantly brought the Frenchman the fame of a great chef, and the popularity of his restaurant, which was beginning to fade, flared up with renewed vigor.

The visitors named the new salad Olivier Salad, which was quite in the tradition of Russian names. Since then, the name Olivier has become a household name, and they tried to repeat the salad countless times, in the end, simplifying the recipe so much that its modern version is the exact opposite of the original.

Many chefs tried to repeat the Olivier recipe, but, not knowing all the ingredients, they inevitably failed - the taste of the real Olivier Salad could only be appreciated in the Hermitage restaurant.

The taste of the famous dish was to a large extent obtained due to Monsieur Olivier's own mayonnaise recipe.

It was said that the Frenchman zealously kept the recipe for cooking and the operation for its preparation was carried out in a special room behind a closed door.

The path of the sauce was not easy. Initially, Olivier made exactly the sauce called “Game Mayonnaise”. It consisted of boiled fillets of hazel grouse and partridge, laid in layers of jelly from the broth. Around the edges of the dish were boiled crayfish necks and small pieces of the tongue.

All this was flavored with a small amount of own-made Provencal sauce. In the center, the structure was decorated with a potato hill with gherkins and slices of boiled eggs, as a decoration. At the same time, the central potato part, according to the author's intention, was intended rather for beauty.

One day, Lucien Olivier noticed that some Russians who ordered this dish immediately broke the whole plan, stirring the whole structure with a spoon, and devoured this delicious mass with great appetite.

The next day, an enterprising Frenchman mixed all the ingredients and poured thick sauce. This is how the famous salad was born, reborn from an exquisite, but inconvenient “game mayonnaise” into an equally refined, but closer to the Russian soul, “Olivier salad”.

Here is the recipe for the classic “Olivier salad” prepared at the best of times at the Hermitage restaurant (restored in 1904 according to the descriptions of one restaurant regular):

Fillet of two boiled hazel grouses,
One boiled veal tongue,
About 100 grams of pressed black caviar,
200 grams of fresh lettuce leaves,
25 boiled crayfish or one large lobster
200-250 grams of small cucumbers,
Half a can of soy kabul (soybean paste),
2 finely chopped fresh cucumbers
100 grams of capers,
5 finely chopped hard boiled eggs

Sauce Provence: 400 grams of olive oil, beaten with two fresh egg yolks, with the addition of French vinegar and mustard.

One of the secrets of the classic taste of Olivier salad was the addition of some spices by the Frenchman. The composition of these seasonings, unfortunately, is unknown, so the true taste of the salad can only be imagined according to the descriptions of contemporaries.

The preparation itself was no less exciting:

Fry the hazel grouse in a 1-2 cm layer of oil on a strong flame for 5-10 minutes.

Then put them in boiling water or broth (beef or chicken), add 150 ml of Madeira per 850 ml of broth, 10-20 pitted olives, 10-20 small mushrooms and cook for 20-30 minutes over low heat under the lid.

When the meat begins to separate slightly from the bones, salt, let it cook for a couple more minutes and turn off the flame. Place the pot of grouse, without pouring out the broth, into a large bowl of cold water and let cool.

The purpose of this is to let the grouse meat cool down gradually. The fact is that when separated in hot form, the meat begins to dry out and loses its tenderness. However, it is necessary not to overdo it and separate the warm meat - do not let the hazel grouse freeze, otherwise it will completely stop being removed from the bones.

Wrap the removed meat in foil and place in a cold place. Do not pour out the broth after boiling the mushrooms - it will make a great soup! (if you do not find hazel grouse and decide to replace them with chicken, remember - the chicken must be cut into 2-3 parts and cooked a little longer - 30-40 minutes).

The tongue should be free of fat, lymph nodes, sublingual muscle tissue and mucus. Perhaps half of the language will be enough.

Thoroughly rinse the tongue in cold water, put it in cold water, bring to a boil and cook over low heat with a tightly closed lid for 2-4 hours (the time depends on the age of the tongue owner - 2 hours will be enough for a young calf).

Half an hour before the tongue is ready, add chopped carrots, parsley root, onions and a piece of bay leaf to the same saucepan. Salt 5-10 minutes before the end of cooking.

As soon as the tongue is cooked, immediately put it in a container of cold water for 20-30 seconds, then put it on a plate and remove the skin from it (if the tongue still burns your fingers, dip it again in water).

After cleaning the tongue, put it back into the broth and quickly bring it to a boil, then turn off the flame and leave the saucepan to cool in a large container filled with ice water. Wrap the cooled tongue in foil and place in a cold place.

Cut the pressed caviar into small cubes.

Wash the lettuce thoroughly, dry and chop just before cooking.

Dip the live crayfish washed in cold water into the boiling solution head down. To prepare a solution for cooking crayfish, take: 25 grams of parsley, onions and carrots, 10 grams of tarragon, 30-40 grams of dill, 1 bay leaf, a few peas of allspice and 50 grams of salt.

After placing the crayfish in boiling water, let the water boil again and cook for another 10 minutes. After turning off the fire, do not take it out immediately, but let the crayfish brew, then cool the pan with ready-made crayfish using the method described above.

Finely chop the pickles right before mixing.

Mash the soybeans before adding them to the salad.

Peel fresh cucumbers and chop finely (not necessarily evenly - you can also “chop”). Finely chop the capers as well, after drying them.

Eggs should be large and fresh. Do not overcook them under any circumstances. Pay close attention to this part. The feeling from the eggs should be fresh, the protein should be tender, not rubbery. Boil for 7-8 minutes, but not 15.

Chop all the ingredients and mix (try to do this carefully, moving from bottom to top). Add homemade mayonnaise and serve immediately.

It is also important to take into account the amount of alcohol drunk by the guests. The more, the hotter the sauce should be. If the guests are sober, then it would be more logical to season with classic mayonnaise in order to appreciate the delicate taste of all the ingredients.

This was the recipe when it was reproduced by one of the restaurant's regular customers. Perhaps something was not taken into account, but the main components that are difficult to hide from the sophisticated public are present in the recipe.

The secret of the spices that made the taste of the dish special and unique has unfortunately been lost. After the death of Lucien Olivier in 1883, the Hermitage restaurant went to the "Olivier partnership", for a long time the restaurant changed hands, and the famous recipe went to the rich houses of the capital, or rather the kitchens of these houses.

The personal chefs of many of the richest people in the capital tried to recreate the recipe of the French master and offered this eminent salad at dinner parties. This situation could have lasted forever, if not for the First World War, and then the 1917 revolution.

The abrupt disappearance of many products hurt the Olivier salad. At that time, there was no time for frills - for many years the country plunged into the darkness of timelessness, and on the food side - into severe hunger and a rationing system for distributing products.

But already in 1924, the era of the New Economic Policy begins and the country again appears, it seemed, irrevocably gone products.

Lucien Olivier was buried in Moscow at the Vvedensky cemetery (12 units). In the summer of 2008, the monument was restored.

However, many things could not be returned. Branded "bourgeois" hazel grouses or cancer necks became inaccessible, and simply irrelevant among the then townspeople.

NEP times gave us several options for salad. One of these restaurants, and I must say the central one at that time, since the highest party workers dined there, was the Moscow restaurant. Headed by Ivan Mikhailovich Ivanov.

He retained, albeit in a modified form, but close to the original recipe for the famous dish. And the realities of time have made their changes to the recipe.

Ingredients for making Olivier salad. So, the recipe for "Olivier Salad" according to the version of the Moscow restaurant in the mid-20s of the 20th century:

Ingredients:

6 potatoes
2 heads of onions,
3 medium sized carrots
2 pickled cucumbers,
1 apple
200 grams of boiled poultry meat,
1 cup green peas
3 boiled eggs
half a cup of olive mayonnaise
salt, pepper to taste.

Cooking:

Vegetables take medium size, fresh. Chop all the ingredients finely and very evenly into equal pieces. Boil potatoes and carrots, peel, chop everything, mix and season with mayonnaise, garnish with parsley and apple slices on top.

I invite everyone to speak in