In 1860, the youngest of the three sons of the famous French chef Olivier Lucien arrived in Russia, where French cuisine was traditionally highly valued, to work. The main wealth that his father awarded him was the family recipe for seasoning for the sauce, which the son should not have given out to anyone under any pretext.

They say that so that the secret would not become the property of competitors, he added a secret seasoning to mayonnaise in a separate room, completely alone. And then he took it with him. How else could he keep his secret?

During Lucien Olivier's lifetime, the recipe was not found in any cookbook. Having recreated the salad ingredients from memory, professional chefs were unable to comprehend the secret of the original seasoning; it remained a mystery of culinary art.

The very first time salad recipe was published 4 months after the death of the master in the magazine “Our Food”:

« I will describe to the finest detail the preparation in the spirit of the author of this savory snack:
Fry the hazel grouse, cool, cut into small slices; prepare boiled (non-crumbly) potatoes, also in slices, and slices of fresh cucumbers, then add caporets and olives;mix all this and pour in plenty of the following sauce:
Add Kabul soybean* to an ordinary cold Provençal sauce until it has a dark color and a piquant taste, cover the top with crayfish tails, lettuce, lettuce and a little chopped lanspeek (strong jelly from broth). Serve very cold in a crystal vase, like a fruit masedouane. In winter, fresh cucumbers can be replaced with large gherkins. Hazel grouse can also be replaced with grouse, partridge or chicken, but the taste of this appetizer will then no longer be so subtle.”

Recipe from 1904- a salad reproduced by the heirs (“Olivier’s partnership”). This is a richer version of the salad, with several more expensive rare products added to it. If you adapt it to modern conditions, you will get the recipe that is offered to you. It’s not as simple as the Soviet version with sausage and green peas; you’ll have to search for the ingredients, maybe even for a long time, but it’s worth it!

Lucien Olivier's modern salad recipe, close to the original:
- 3 hazel grouse (instead you can take partridge, quail or chicken meat),
– 1 veal tongue,
- 80-100g black pressed caviar (can be replaced with red caviar),
- 200g lettuce leaves,
— 25 crayfish necks (or 1 large boiled lobster, or 1 can of lobster, or 100g of crabs canned in their own juice),
- 150g pickles (very small pickled cucumbers),
- 2 fresh cucumbers
- 100g capers (pickled flower buds of a prickly vegetable, can be replaced with pickled nasturtium buds),
- 10-20 olives,
- 6-8 quail eggs (or 4-5 chicken), hard-boiled,
- 3-4 boiled potatoes (for decoration),
- half a jar of old-fashioned Soya Kabul sauce

All this “bourgeois” delicacy was seasoned with Provencal sauce, which was prepared with French vinegar and Provençal olive oil, with quail egg yolks, to which was added “Soy Kabul”, an ancient sauce, its analogue is known in our time as “Southern” tomato sauce. . To dress this salad, we will prepare homemade Provencal mayonnaise, since store-bought mayonnaise will simply ruin the dish.

Preparing the salad

Boiled hazel grouse, or other boiled, baked or fried poultry, are suitable for Olivier salad (it is better to replace it with partridges, quails or young chickens).
Cool the cooked bird, remove the skin and bones, leaving only the fillet. Cut into small pieces.

Wash your tongue, then boil for 2 hours, add carrots, onions, salt and spices to the broth. Cool the tongue in cold water, remove the thick skin, then boil it a little more.
We take the tongue out of the water, cool, peel, and cut into small pieces.

Boil the crayfish until tender, drain the water, cool, clean, and cut into small pieces.
We leave a few necks to decorate the finished dish. The dish will look gorgeous if you leave 1-2 whole crayfish for decoration.

Boil potatoes and eggs, cool and peel. Chop the lettuce leaves. (Don't forget to leave half of the ingredients to decorate the salad).

Chop cucumbers and pickles, add capers.

Place the chopped ingredients in a bowl, mix, salt to taste, season with homemade Provencal mayonnaise, place in a wide salad bowl or dish, on lettuce leaves.

Lucien Olivier at the end of the 19th century and was considered a rare delicacy. Lucien Olivier himself never gave anyone the exact recipe for his salad - this appetizer was very expensive at that time, and its preparation for wealthy merchants brought considerable profit to the author.

Variations of the original Olivier salad recipes that have survived to this day are only replicas and attempts to recreate the taste of the famous salad.

In the book "A Guide to Learning the Basics of Culinary Arts" The 1897 edition contains the following recipe for Olivier salad:

Olivier's original recipe

Ingredients for 1 person:

• Hazel grouse - 1/2 pieces
• - 3 pieces
• - 1 piece
• Lettuce - 3-4 sheets
• - 1.5 table. spoons
• Cancer necks - 3 pieces
• Lanspik - 1/4 cup
• Capers - 1 teaspoon
• Olives - 3-5 pieces

Step-by-step cooking recipe:

Cut the fillet of fried good hazel grouse into blankets and mix with blankets of boiled, not crumbly potatoes and slices of fresh cucumbers, add capers and olives and pour in a large amount of Provencal sauce, with the addition of Kabul soybeans. Once cooled, transfer to a crystal vase and decorate with crayfish tails, lettuce leaves and chopped lancepick.

Serve very cold. 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.

For the sauce: Provencal mayonnaise should be prepared with French vinegar from 2 eggs and 1 pound of Provencal (olive) oil.

According to other sources, the original recipe for Olivier salad is as follows:

Cooking Olivier salad according to the classic recipe of Lucien Olivier

The method of preparation, serving and serving is similar to the first recipe.

There are other versions of the “Real Olivier Recipe”, but based on the list of ingredients and comparing them with historical facts that have survived to this day, they do not inspire confidence.

You've probably tried Olivier salad at least once in your life. A real French recipe will surprise you, because the original dish created by a French chef is significantly different from the Soviet version to which we have become attached with all our hearts.

We can rightfully consider Olivier our Russian dish. It would seem, why? After all, it was created by a Frenchman. And yet, Lucien Olivier, after whom the salad was named, worked at the Moscow Hermitage restaurant. By the way, Olivier is called Russian salad abroad. So, everything is fair.

New Year 2016 is the year of the Monkey. Have you read it yet? There we wrote that the Monkey loves creativity and spontaneity. Therefore, if you want to surprise the Monkey and your guests, then prepare Olivier according to an old recipe. We'll have to sweat.

The original recipe, according to Wikipedia, was given in 1894 in the magazine “Our Food”. We will use this exact recipe. The ingredients are collected for one serving.

What you will need:

• half hazel grouse;
• 3 potatoes;
• 1 fresh cucumber;
• 3 lettuce leaves;
• 1.5 tbsp. provencal (sauce);
• 3 cancer necks;
• ¼ tbsp. lanspika (for its preparation you will need broth and gelatin);
• 1 tsp capers;
• 3 olives.

Let's start cooking.

1. The hazel grouse meat must first be fried and cut into blankets (straight, even cubes).
2. Boil the potatoes, also cut into blankets.
3. Cut cucumber slices, mix with pieces of hazel grouse meat and potatoes.
4. Add capers and olives.
5. Let's make a lanspik. It is a broth. It’s a little difficult to prepare, but without it the cold appetizer won’t taste the same. Boil the broth, skim off the fat. Add the soaked gelatin into the hot broth and pour it onto a baking sheet, let it cool and harden. According to the original recipe, the proteins were added, cooled in the cold, and then cut into cubes. Instead of proteins, add gelatin and cut into the same cubes. Some of them will be used for decoration, and some will go into the salad itself.
6. Pour Provencal sauce over all ingredients. Today you can use mayonnaise, but in past times the sauce was made from French vinegar, two eggs and a pound of olive oil.
7. Cool the salad and place in a crystal vase.
8. All that remains is to decorate the salad. Look at how Olivier is decorated today, but chef Olivier used crayfish necks, lettuce and lancepick for decoration.

The recipe notes for the old fashioned salad stated that partridge or veal could be used instead of grouse. If this is not available, then chicken will do, but a real salad is made only from hazel grouse.

Note: this salad will not be stored for a long time, so you need to prepare it without additives.

For those who prefer the Soviet analogue, which, by the way, has also already become a classic, we suggest using Olivier recipes, and.

If you are planning to prepare an Olivier salad, a real French recipe is unlikely to fully suit modern realities. After all, neither hazel grouse nor Provencal sauce are sold in stores today. However, by substituting some ingredients and decorating in an old-fashioned way, you can make something very similar. Try it and cook with pleasure.

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. At that time, Russian national cuisine - nourishing, plentiful, but quite simple - was gradually changing under the pressure of a 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 the signature dish of the 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 chef 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 catering establishments.

“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. Peel fresh cucumbers and cut into thin slices. Cut the truffles into circles. Boil the crayfish and take their necks. Prepare a thick Provençal sauce, add Kabul Son for spiciness, and a little thick cream for better taste and color. 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 salad in the middle of the vase as a bouquet, and arrange crayfish necks, claws from boiled crayfish and truffles around it more beautifully. 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 fresh tomatoes, cut into circles, to these salads. 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.

In 5 years, Tsarist Russia will end along with 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, the 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 see that by this time there was little left of the French appetizer. 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 to Olivier. In 1952, a book calling for abundance and showcasing the best examples of Soviet food photography featured boiled carrots and, unexpectedly, cauliflower as ingredients for the first time. The dish is decorated - in the absence of fish - no longer with crayfish, but with a boiled egg; later 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 with cold water until they cool.
5. Cool all ingredients at 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!

The real Olivier salad has a history that has lasted for several centuries. It all started with the Hermitage restaurant, which was opened by the famous French chef Lucien Olivier. There are many legends surrounding the original recipe, since no one has been able to accurately restore all the ingredients of their favorite salad. Lucien kept the sauce with which he seasoned the dish a special secret. However, he did not share his secret even with his family and took it with him. Nowadays, it is customary to add mayonnaise or sour cream-based sauce, but it is reliably known that it has nothing in common with the original recipe. Since then, many people have tried to restore the recipe and even offered their own versions. In particular, the earliest publication of the Olivier salad dates back to 1894. The recipe was proposed in the magazine “Our Food” and its author is unfortunately unknown. There is not even any evidence that the author of the recipe has ever tried the dish.

Misconception: Lucien Olivier is the author of the dish? No!

Lucien Olivier was a talented French chef, for whom his own restaurant in Moscow served as a big step up. His clients included famous people, politicians and the rich. One day the chef decided to present his visitors a new signature dish. On a large vessel, he laid out the ingredients separately from each other in portions, and placed a small gravy boat next to it. The young man expected admiring glances appreciating the subtle idea of ​​the owner of the establishment. But instead, he saw people mixing all the ingredients together and adding a whole portion of sauce to the plate. “What kind of pigs?” — people talked about such a reaction. working with him. The outraged Olivier immediately rushed to the kitchen and angrily began to mix all the ingredients in the salad. Next, I generously seasoned them with sauce, which remained a secret. To his surprise, this “food for pigs” made him famous and made him the most fashionable chef in Moscow. The salad was named after the cook - “Olivier”. But just that little story is enough to understand who really was the author of the famous salad, and the authors were the visitors. They were the ones who created and brought to the masses a dish that was loved by millions.

The real Olivier salad recipe

Unfortunately, the recipe for the authentic Olivier salad is unknown. But there is the most famous interpretation of the recipe, which was written by a visitor to the Hermitage restaurant.Pelageya Pavlovna Alexandrova- Russian and Soviet writer, author of a number of culinary publications, teacher of food science and meat science. It was she who published the Olivier salad recipe in her cookbook in 1897. She described it this way:

Olivier salad

Necessary products and their proportions per person.

Hazel grouse - ½ piece. Potatoes - 3 pieces. Cucumbers - 1 piece. Lettuce - 3-4 leaves. Provencal - 1½ table. spoons. Cancer necks - 3 pieces. Lanspik - ¼ cup. Capers - 1 teaspoon. Olives - 3-5 pieces.

Cooking method: Cut the fillet of fried good hazel grouse into blankets and mix with blankets of boiled, not crumbly potatoes and slices of fresh cucumbers, add capers and olives and pour in a large amount of Provencal sauce, with the addition of Kabul soybeans. Once cooled, transfer to a crystal vase and decorate with crayfish tails, lettuce leaves and chopped lancepick. Serve very cold. 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.

But the Soviet recipe for Olivier salad was born in 1960, thanks to publication in a magazine. It did not contain hazel grouse, capers or other ingredients. It contained sausage, gherkins and mayonnaise. That is, it is this recipe that has caught on the most, since it is the simplest and most accessible today. It is worth noting that the grave of Lucien Olivier was discovered and made public only in 2008 at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow.