Just before the holidays we had some Ukrainian journalists who requested to make a Salad Olivier, a traditional Russian New year’s dish. It goes without saying we made some changes to the recipe with the aid of Foodpairing. Here you can find our recipes.
The classic Salad Olivier
The Salad Olivier was created in 1860 by the Belgian Lucien Olivier, Chef of the Hermitage, one of the most famous restaurants of Moscow at that time.
The original recipe contained veal tongue, smoked duck, caviar, lettuce, crayfish, capers and grouse. A sauce was added based on olive oil, white wine vinegar and mustard.
Over the years the recipe got altered, more expensive ingredients were replaced. The recipe evolved into a salad dish that is better known now as œuf à la russe, a salad of carrot, pea, cucumber, dill and mayonnaise, served with a hard boiled egg and optionally some ham.
A Foodpairing® Remix
When looked at the Foodpairing tree of boiled potato, you’ll easily find all the ingredients that are used for the modern Salad Olivier. We used the same base recipe to create some Foodpairing twists and remixes.
Foodpairing Tree
A first variation we’ve created is the base recipe with some fruit twists added to it. Use the category filters to find fitting fruits. We’ve chosen grapefruit.
Salad Olivier with Grapefruit
The next variations are remixes, replacing some of the base ingredients. We started with potato, carrot, dill and mayonnaise. Crayfish was chosen next, hinting to the original recipe of 1860. We blended some yoghurt in the mayonnaise to freshen up the dish and finished with some unexpected ground coffee, sprinkled over the dish.
Salad Olivier with Crayfish and coffee
For a last variation we decided to incorporate some traditional Belgian ingredients: brown shrimp and chocolate. We kept it simple by limiting the vegetables to potatoes and peas, which are mixed with a dash olive oil and chopped dill. The white chocolate is melted with an equal amount of yoghurt to create a kind of mayonnaise.
Salad Olivier with brown shrimp and white chocolate
