Cooking with Class: Lucien Olivier

The final resting place of celebrated Belgian-born chef Lucien Olivier (1838-1883) in Vvedenskoye Cemetery, Moscow, Russia. Image by Dinborough from Flickr.com.

In skimming Mark Hampton on Decorating (Random House, 1989) I came across a mention of one of the great American designer's culinary treats—"a big bowl of Russian salad, one of my favourite cold dishes". A classic since it was first concocted in the 1860s by Lucien Olivier, the Belgian-born chef who manned the deluxe restaurant Hermitage in Moscow, this well-chilled creation is known variously as Salad Olivier, Salad Russe, and Russian Salad, and has gone through a variety of permutations over the last century and a half.

Monsieur Olivier's version, according to Wikipedia, contained "grouse, veal tongue, caviar, lettuce, crayfish tails, capers, gherkins, cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, and soy beans", all lightly bound with a creamy mayonnaise composed of "French wine vinegar, mustard, and Provencal olive oil". The precise proportions remain unknown today, since Chef Olivier took its secrets to his grave. Still that didn't stop his admirers from trying to resurrect and sometimes improve on it. So in honour of the steaming July weather and the late Mr Hampton, I present, for your collective delectation, just a few of the options, which seem to serve between 4 and 6 people and can easily be made in larger batches.

RUSSIAN SALAD (1895)

Source: John Bell's The Servant's Guide: A Series of Practical Recipes Culled From Personal Experience.

Take equal quantities of carrots, turnips, potatoes, and pears, cut all into small slices with two or three truffles; mix with mayonnaise sauce very gently so as not to break the potatoes, and add a little cayenne. The vegetables must all be boiled separately and of a good colour.

SALAD A LA RUSSE (1896)

Source: Gesine Lemcke's Desserts and Salads.

Boil 6 medium-sized potatoes with the skins on, 2 beets, and 3 celery roots. When cold, remove the skins and cut them into small dice. Also cut into dice 2 pickles and 1 dozen anchovies or 3 herrings previously soaked in water, freed from skins and bones and cut fine. Add to this 2 tablespoonfuls of capers, 1/2 cup grated horseradish, and mix the whole with a fine mayonnaise. Put the salad on ice for 1 hour before serving. When ready to serve put the salad onto a round dish, pile up high in the center, and garnish with hard-boiled eggs. Chop fine the yolks and whites separately. Also chop beets and green pickles fine. Lay the yolks, whites, beets, and pickles in small clusters all over the salad and garnish the edge with green lettuce leaves or shaved pink and white horseradish. Pink horseradish is made by pouring a little cochineal over it and mixing well.

RUSSIAN SALAD (1903)

Source: Adolphe Meyer's The Post-graduate Cookery Book: Consisting of a Large Number of Special Receipts, Many of Them Original, which are Offered in this Form as a Supplement to Existing Works on the Culinary Art.

Cut in small dice equal parts of cooked carrots, turnips, beets, potatoes, string beans, and asparagus tips (if in season). Add some green peas and gherkins, boneless anchovies, and some breast of chicken, turkey, or partridge (all of these ingredients cut as small as the vegetables). Season with salt, red pepper, oil, and vinegar. If served in a salad bowl, decorate with beets, capers, gherkins, boneless anchovies, hard-boiled eggs, and caviar. Instead of oil and vinegar the salad may be dressed with mayonnaise sauce.

RUSSIAN SALAD (1960)

Source: Craig Claiborne, The New York Times.

Combine equal parts cooked vegetables—carrots, turnips, celery root, beets, and potatoes—cut into small cubes, plus cooked green peas. Marinate the vegetables several hours in French dressing. Drain them and mix them with enough mayonnaise to bind them together.

SALAD OLIVIER (1992)

Source: Kyra Petrovskaya Wayne's Russian Cookbook.

1 boiled chicken, boned

2-3 boiled potatoes

2-3 hard-boiled eggs

2-3 small dill pickles

3-4 tablespoons mayonnaise

Salt and pepper to taste

Bone the chicken and slice the meat into thin, one-inch-long strips. Slice cooked and cooled potatoes similarly. Take off the skin from dill pickles and slice them in the same way as the chicken and potatoes; combine them all together. Very carefully work in the mayonnaise. Make a mount of this salad, decorating the top and the sides of it with the slices of hard-boiled eggs.

Another way to prepare Salad Olivier is to use cold duck instead of chicken. In this case, add a few olives (black or green) to the decoration of your salad. Still another way is to use cold veal instead of fowl. And still another variation is to use a combination of meats (chicken and veal) and 1/2 cup of cooked or canned green peas, added to the above-mentioned ingredients. Actually the last version is the most popular one in Russia today.