Andrey Andrianov. Provencal. 2012.
In Russia, this is most often sold under the name 'Stolichny' (meaning ‘capital’). In Europe, it's known as Russian Salad. In Kazakhstan, people call it anything they like: ‘New Year’, ‘Festive’, or ‘Moscow’. Last week, the author of this article was standing in line at the culinary department of a supermarket in Almaty. There were three people ahead of him, and each of them bought a box of salad, which in this supermarket carried a rather creative name—‘Meat Salad’.
However, all three customers asked for something entirely different: ‘... and 300 grams of Olivier, please!' Without skipping a beat, the saleswoman nodded and reached a ladle toward the bowl of ‘Meat Salad’ with its mayonnaise-covered hills.
As we will find, tradition can sometimes be surprisingly resilient.
The legislative replacement of 'bourgeois' French dish names in Soviet Russia occurred in 1928. All kinds of ‘consomme printanier’ in Soviet restaurants and canteens forever turned into broth with vegetables and greens, Soup du Barry became a mashed cauliflower soup, and vol-au-vents became chicken cutlets. Of course, culinary craft and magic suffered, but proletarian morality remained strong. The Olivier salad also fell victim to this change, and in the most garish restaurants and in the numerous private dining rooms that opened in the late 1920s, guests were still treated to ‘Olivier’ as the name was so easily recognized.
Even Gilyarovsky, in his work Moscow and Muscovites, which made a lot of noise in those years, immortalized this salad in the public consciousness: ‘It was considered an elaborate chic if the lunches were prepared by the French chef Olivier, who had already become famous for his invented salad “Olivier”, without which lunch was not considered lunch, and the secret of which was never shared. No matter how hard the gourmets tried, they couldn't recreate it: they got close, but not quite.’
According to Gilyarovsky, the brilliant chef Lucien Olivier was a co-owner of the Hermitage restaurant and was able to acquire this luxurious establishment thanks to his famous salad. From an investigation conducted in 2017 by journalist Alexey Alexeev of the newspaper Kommersant, we also know other things about Lucien Olivier. According to some Moscow address books dating from the 1860s to 1880s, the owner of the Hermitage Hotel (not a restaurant!) was indeed a man named Olivier, although initially he was named Nikolai. His name was changed to Lucien only in the late 1870s.
The journalist reasonably suggests that we are dealing not with a French chef but with a Russian subject with French roots who, at the height of his fame, adopted a French name as a kind of artistic pseudonym. But the journalist didn’t stop at that; at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery, he discovered a grave with an inscription that reads ‘Lucien Olivier. Passed away on November 14, 1883. Lived for 45 years. By friends and acquaintances.’ The unusual inscription, without a birth date, indicated that friends and acquaintances had no idea when the great chef's birthday was and, apparently, how old he actually was.
However, the journalist continued to search through address books from the 1850s, finding a French hairdresser named Joseph (Osip) Olivier, and a list of all the children in the family, including a boy named Lukyan, who was six years old in 1850. The name Lukyan is the Russian version of Lucien, but it was perceived in this form only among the common folk and was quite archaic. A child from a rural background might bear a name inspired by saints, but a young man from the capital who decided to pursue the culinary arts would likely have been given a more respectable and sophisticated name. Nikolai, for example, is a very good and beautiful name, and it was the name of an emperor who had been on the throne in recent years.
Evgenia Gapchinskaya. Olivier salad. 2009.
Why did Olivier, at the age of thirty, decide to become Lucien–Lukyan again? There may be many theories, but they are all pure speculation, and we do not know the answer. But we can almost certainly assume that he did not have a family—only friends and acquaintances are mentioned on his grave. His lawful spouse certainly would not have added five extra years to her husband's age; she must have seen his documents at least during the marriage ceremony, and in the church, those getting married were obliged to enter their age in the church register.
All this confusion with Olivier’s names and his nearly unknown history (a rarity in Moscow—a big village where almost any well-known person inevitably became the subject of gossip and later of feuilletons, the hero of verses, a prominent character in correspondences and diaries) has created a certain mystery about his identity that seems to be reflected in his creation.
It can be said that Lucien Olivier managed to take his secret to the grave. Starting from the late nineteenth century, we encounter numerous mentions of the Olivier salad in cookbooks. It is often described in literature, and if you collect all the different information together, the result is intriguing. According to various sources, the Olivier salad included: capers, crayfish tails, truffles, black caviar, quail, quail eggs, pickles, marinated cabbage, fresh cucumbers, boiled potatoes, olives, beans, soy sauce (yes, even at that time, though this sauce made from fermented soybeans was not as popular as it is now; it was still known and called soya kabul back then), whipped olive oil with pieces of veal aspic, and cayenne pepper.
These accounts were in fact written by contemporaries who had tasted the original salad in Olivier's personal interpretation. There's a suspicion that the brilliant chef simply threw any leftover provisions into the pot and doused them with his signature mayonnaise, so you could find almost anything in there, depending on what was available on the day. Indeed, Gilyarovsky indirectly confirms this theory when describing the impoverishment of the Hermitage restaurant in the 1920s, saying, ‘Once again, names appeared on the menu: Pompadour cutlets, Marie Louise, Vallarua, Olivier Salad ... But the indefatigable cutlets were fried in castor oil, and the Olivier salad was made from scraps ... Nevertheless, it was quite suitable for the visitors of the New Economic Policy era.’
This suggests that his complaints were not about the composition of the salad but rather about the quality of the ingredients used. Soon, any mixture of potatoes, meat or sausage, and whatever else was available became known as the Olivier salad. The main thing was not to skimp on mayonnaise; it would make everything taste better.
Despite the decline in the taste of the chef’s food, the Olivier salad's reputation as a luxurious, expensive, and festive dish remained intact. Since the newly liberated working women could no longer afford to spend time every day cooking vegetables, peeling them, and chopping them, the Olivier salad became a labor-intensive and time-consuming dish reserved for important holidays. It even became one of the main symbols of the Soviet New Year, alongside Christmas trees, champagne, and tangerines. Friends who tease lovers still mockingly ask, ‘When will the salads be served?’, hinting that a wedding is on the horizon. And there is no doubt that these ‘salads’ aren’t referring to rocket salad and Greek yogurt.
Philip Kubarev. The traditional New year. 2009.
What to read
1. Vladimir Usov and Lidia Usova. Основы кулинарного мастерства. М., 2017.
2. Vladimir Gilyarovskiy. Москва и москвичи. М., 2008.