A traditional treat for the New Year's table in Russia is Olivier salad. There are many options for its preparation. The salad is named after its creator, the French chef Lucien Olivier. So who was this man, whose name is known in almost every Russian family.
A native of France, chef Lucien Olivier worked at the end of the 19th century in the fashionable Moscow tavern "Hermitage". His signature dish was salad, which was very popular with the restaurant's goers.
The composition of this dish at that time included: potatoes, fillets of hazel grouse and quail, gherkins. However, no one knew the exact recipe for the salad. The Frenchman kept it in the strictest confidence. The Olivier salad was prepared in secrecy.
Lucien Olivier retired to a separate office and single-handedly set about creating his masterpiece, which was so beloved by the Moscow public.
One day, an unforeseen circumstance happened: Olivier died unexpectedly at the age of 45. He is buried in Moscow at the Vvedenskoye cemetery.
The salad recipe, it would seem, was lost forever, but at the beginning of the 20th century, a certain Ivan Ivanov suddenly appears, who began to prepare a once popular salad.
Ivan Ivanov said that for more than twenty years he was Olivier's assistant, and he still managed to find out the recipe for the famous French dish.
In the 30s of the last century, Ivanov worked as a chef in the capital's fashionable restaurant "Moscow". During the years of Soviet power, it was almost impossible to get some of the ingredients that were part of the traditional Olivier salad, so Ivanov was forced to change the recipe.
Instead of quails and hazel grouses, chicken was now added to the salad, and gherkins replaced ordinary cucumbers.
Due to the simplification of the recipe and the availability of its ingredients, Olivier salad began to be served not only in expensive restaurants, but also in ordinary canteens. It was in those years that this dish became traditional for almost every festive table. Over time, boiled sausage and green peas began to be added to the salad, although this was not in the original recipe.
This is how Lucien Olivier became the author of perhaps the most popular dish in Russia.
