Popular new year’s salad “Olivier” was invented out of anger.
The most popular and favorite salad for the New year and there was Olivier. Without this food it is hard to imagine a winter feast. And every year the main new year attribute is constantly being developed, complementing the traditional composition of the new salad ingredients: pineapple, sauerkraut, seaweed, crab sticks, etc. But does everyone know the story of this salad?
The famous salad was invented in the 19th century in Russia, the French chef Lucien Olivier — the founder of the famous restaurant “Hermitage”. The elite restaurant was built by Lucien Olivier, after years of living in Moscow, when he realized that the Russian capital lacks of French chic. By joining forces with a wealthy merchant Jacob Peguam, the chef buys land in the center of Moscow and intends to build a first-class restaurant with the best French champagnes.
By the mid 60-ies of the 19th century on the site of the booth that sold snuff, arose a magnificent building with white columns, crystal chandeliers with isolated offices and luxury interiors. For Moscow, then it was new and nascent bourgeoisie rushed into the restaurant.
At first the school was called “the Tavern”. But, despite this, in 1879, at “the Hermitage” took place gala dinner in honour of Ivan Turgenev, in 1880 in honor of Fyodor Dostoevsky, in 1899 – famous celebration of the centenary of the birth of Pushkin, which was all the then eminent writers and poets. Hermitage celebrated the anniversaries of University professors and celebrated Tatyana’s day, students gathered intellectuals and feasted on rich merchants. In General the restaurant Olivier as its excellent cuisine, attracting the best people of that time.
Lucien Olivier, the youngest of three brothers Olivier, which began with the history of the salad, being very young, went to work in Moscow. Like many French, he hoped to apply his culinary skills in the country, always respectfully refers to French cuisine. While his brothers had prepared for French gourmets, Lucien opened his restaurant “Hermitage”. Initially, the business made a lot of money, and the young Frenchman was preparing familiar dishes. This success contributed to the “family” recipe-improvement maonskogo sauce or mayonnaise. In the family of Olivier in the early 19th century began to add in the manufacture of mustard sauce and some secret spices, making the taste of a familiar sauce was slightly spicy. The popularity of the mayonnaise family, Olivier was so strong that it allowed his older brother to keep his business in France, and Lucien to open the Moscow “branch” on the Pipe square.
But everything is transient in this world, and gradually only one sauce for the success of the institution was not enough. Taste it quickly pall, and the changing face of fashion has swung in the direction of skinny pale young ladies, whose beauty, of course, interfered with delicious and high-calorie sauces Olivier. It was urgent to do something. And then Lucien Olivier invented a new salad, a true work of art. Its taste was so exquisite that it instantly brought to the French the glory of the great cooks and it was starting to fade, the popularity of his restaurant broke out with renewed vigor. The visitors have named a new salad “Olivier Salad”, which was quite in the traditions of Russian names. Since then, Oliver has become a household name, and salad tried to repeat countless number of times, in the end, simplifying the recipe so that the modern version is the exact opposite of the original. Many chefs tried to repeat the recipe for Olivier, but without knowing all of the components inevitably failed – the taste of “Salad” can be assessed only in the restaurant “Hermitage”.
Taste the famous dishes in no small measure was due to its own recipe of mayonnaise Monsieur Olivier. It was said that the French jealously kept the recipe and the operation of its preparation was performed in a special room behind a closed door. And the way the sauce was difficult. Initially, Olivier was made a sauce called “Mayonnaise venison”. In it consisted of cooked fillet of grouse and partridges, interleaved with layers of jelly from the broth. At the edges of the dish, lay the cooked crayfish and small pieces of the language. In all this was added a small amount of the sauce “Provansal” of their own making. In the center of the design adorned the hill of potatoes with gherkins and slices of boiled eggs as a decoration. The Central part of the potato the author intended rather for beauty.
Once Lucien Olivier noticed that some Russian who ordered this dish, just broke the whole thing, stirring with a spoon the entire structure, and with a big appetite absorbed the delicious mass. The next day the enterprising Frenchman has mixed all the components and thickly sauced. So there was the birth of the famous salad, reborn from refined, but closer to our soul a “salad”.
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