Photo: Pannet · CC BY-SA 4.0
Olivier Salad (Diced Potato, Egg and Pickle Bound with Mayonnaise)
Russia’s salad, and compulsory on a New Year table: potato, egg, pickled cucumber, peas and ham all cut to the same small dice and bound with mayonnaise. Temperature is the whole thing. Mayonnaise is a finished emulsion, and warm food breaks it from the outside — the fat softens and coalesces while steam condenses into it and thins it. So everything goes in completely cold and dry, which is the exact opposite of the rule for a German potato salad.
Ingredients
- To cook
- potatoes · waxy, boiled in their skins500 g
- carrots · boiled in their skins2
- eggs · hard-boiled5
- Straight in
- pickled cucumbers · dill pickles, pressed dry200 g
- peas · tinned or frozen; drain tinned ones completely200 g
- ham or bologna sausage · chicken breast or beef also work300 g
- onion · optional; very finely chopped and rinsed in cold water0.5
- To bind
- mayonnaise250 g
- Dijon mustard · optional1 tsp
- salt1 tsp
- black pepper0.5 tsp
- dill · at the end1 handful
Steps
- ⏲ 30 min
Boil the potatoes and carrots in their skins, from cold water. Peeled, they take on water that later thins the mayonnaise. Cook until a skewer goes in without them breaking up.
- ⏲ 11 min
Lower the eggs into boiling water for eleven minutes and straight into cold water afterwards (cooking eggs).
- ⏲ 120 min
Cool everything completely. Two hours in the fridge at minimum, overnight for preference. Hurrying this is the one way to ruin the dish.
- ⏲ 30 min
Cut the potato, carrot, egg, pickle and ham all to the same 5-7mm dice. Matching the size is not for looks: it is so that one forkful contains all of it (knife skills).
- ⏲ 5 min
Press the diced pickle dry between kitchen paper, and shake the peas out in a sieve. Whatever water is left goes straight into the mayonnaise.
- ⏲ 5 min
Put everything in a large bowl with the mayonnaise, mustard, salt and pepper and fold it over from underneath in big movements. Stirred hard, the potato edges break down and the whole thing turns into mashed potato.
- ⏲ 120 min
Cover and refrigerate at least two hours. The seasoning evens out and the mayonnaise firms up again. Scatter dill over to serve.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- The original: created in the 1860s by Lucien Olivier, the French chef of the Hermitage restaurant in Moscow, with hazel grouse, crayfish, capers and truffle. What is eaten now is the Soviet rewrite with cheap ingredients — which is why it is also called Stolichny, "salad of the capital".
- New Year food: in Russia it is close to compulsory on the table of 31 December, made in quantity and eaten for days.
- Ensaladilla rusa: Spain's version, with tuna and olives, served as a tapa.
- Sałatka jarzynowa: Poland adds celeriac and apple; Serbia calls it Francuska salata. Nearly every country that eats it calls it by its own name.
- Without meat: leave the ham out and add beans or mushrooms. Common in Russia during Lent.
Tips
- The guide gives this case a section of its own. The culprits Why sauces split sorts through are things that damage the emulsifier, or get added, while you are making the sauce. Here a finished emulsion is broken by what you put it on, which is why that guide sets it apart and names this dish while doing it: warm food softens the fat so the droplets coalesce, and its steam condenses into the sauce and thins it. Ingredients that are merely lukewarm will leave a puddle in the bottom of the bowl by the next day.
- German potato salad is the exact opposite. That one is dressed while warm so the potato drinks the vinegar dressing in. A vinaigrette has no emulsion to break, and warm starch absorbs well. Two potato salads with opposite temperature rules, for one reason.
- Boil them in their skins. Peeled potatoes take on water, and all of that water ends up in the mayonnaise.
- Cold is what keeps the edges. As it cools the starch retrogrades and a cube of potato holds its corners; warm potato crumbles from the moment you cut it. Arancini needs cold rice and lamington needs staled cake for the same property, used differently.
- Matching the dice is cooking, not decoration. At 5-7mm one forkful contains all six things. Cut one component larger and it is tasted on its own.
- Fold, do not stir. Lift from underneath with a spatula. Stirred, the potato dissolves into the dressing.
- Better the next day — but by day three the pickles and vegetables give up water and it goes loose. Two days is the limit.
The basics behind this dish
- Why Sauces Split: Emulsions and Pan SaucesA cream sauce breaking and a carbonara scrambling are the same failure. Temperature and emulsifiers — plus how to bring a split sauce back.
- Serving Temperature: Why Some Dishes Wait and Some CannotWhy cold dishes need heavier seasoning, why rice and rice cake go stale fastest in the fridge of all places, and the dishes where letting the steam off is the point.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
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