Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Russian Salad with Caviar
Russian Salad with Caviar
Pack a conical-shaped mould in ice and decorate the interior with anchovy fillets, poached whites of eggs, and gherkins cut in small pieces, and small French beans, all dipped in half-set aspic jelly to make them adhere to the mould. Cover all with a thin layer of the aspic jelly and let it set. Meanwhile prepare a salad of boiled beetroots, potatoes and carrots (a little of each), as well as a few pickled button mushrooms and capers, a little salted cucumber, and a few sticks of celery, all except the capers being cut up small; add a few fillets of anchovies or salted herrings, a small piece of any cooked fish, and a few crayfish tails, all cut up into small pieces. Put the whole into a basin, pour over sufficient mayonnaise sauce to make the mixture thick, pack the basin in ice, and allow the contents to cool. Turn the salad into the mould, let it remain in the ice for an hour, turn it out onto a dish, and serve with a garnish of small rolls cut in halves, and the center scooped out and filled with caviar.
A moulded aspic salad of the classic Franco-Russian type, built in two stages: a jelly-lined shell and a mayonnaise-bound salad packed inside it. Everything hinges on the aspic being at the right stage of set when you line the mould.
- The hinge: half-set aspicThe decorating jelly must be syrupy and just beginning to thicken — cold to the touch but still flowing. Too warm and the anchovies and beans slide down the mould; too cool and it sets in lumps that will show as cloudy streaks when turned out.
- Aspic strengthFor a lining that holds when unmoulded, use a firmer jelly than you would eat on its own: about 1 envelope (7 g) powdered gelatine per 1½ cups of well-flavoured, clarified fish or veal stock. Chill a teaspoonful on a saucer to test before committing the whole batch.
- Packing in iceIce-packed moulds and basins were the usual means of holding cold moulded work at temperature. A refrigerator does the same work: chill the mould thoroughly, and set each decorated layer for 10–15 minutes before adding the next. The final hour on ice becomes an hour, or longer, in the fridge.
- Poached whites of eggsThis means egg white cooked plain and firm, then sliced or cut into shapes for decoration — the whites of hard-cooked eggs do the same job and cut more cleanly.
- Ingredients by their modern namesFrench beans are slender green beans, blanched and refreshed. Salted cucumber is a brined dill pickle, not a vinegar gherkin. Beetroot should be cooked and peeled, and diced separately at the last moment or it will stain the whole salad pink.
- Crayfish tails and salted herringCrayfish tails are still sold cooked and frozen; small cooked shrimp are the usual stand-in. Salt herring needs soaking in cold water or milk for several hours, with a change or two, before it is edible in a salad; anchovy fillets need only a rinse.
- The mayonnaiseIt should be thick enough to coat, not loose — a slack mayonnaise will weep in the mould and the salad will collapse when turned out. If you are wary of raw yolks, use a pasteurised-egg or commercial mayonnaise thinned with a little lemon juice.
- Turning outDip the mould in warm — not hot — water for three or four seconds, dry it, invert onto a chilled platter and lift straight up. A wet plate lets you slide the salad into position if it lands off-centre.
- The garnishSmall rolls halved and hollowed are croustades in miniature; brush them with butter and dry them briefly in a 300°F oven so they hold the caviar without going soggy. Figure a scant teaspoon of caviar per half.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; a mould of roughly a quart would serve about six to eight as a first course. Best assembled the day it is served, since aspic tends to weep and mayonnaise to separate on standing.
Salade russe was a French restaurant invention as much as a Russian one — the name attached in the nineteenth century to any cold salad of diced cooked vegetables bound with mayonnaise, and the grander versions added fish, crayfish and aspic. Its origins are disputed, and the various stories told about how the dish reached Paris and from there the great hotel dining rooms should be treated with caution. Oscar Tschirky's version, from the Waldorf at the turn of the twentieth century, is the full hotel treatment: a lined and decorated mould, a garnish of caviar croustades, and a shopping list that quietly advertises what the house pantry could supply. It belongs to a moment when a chilled, moulded centrepiece was proof of a kitchen's ice supply and its patience, and when Russian anything — caviar, service à la russe, salade russe — signalled luxury to American diners.