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Russian Salad
Cut in small squares twelve anchovies in oil, the meat from a small, cold, cooked lobster, twelve shelled, cooked, cold shrimp, a cooked, medium carrot, cooked turnip and a cold boiled potato. Place all these articles in a salad bowl, add three tablespoons cooked, cold string beans cut in short pieces, two tablespoons cooked asparagus tips, a tablespoon capers and six sliced pickles. Sprinkle over a half teaspoon finely chopped chervil, teaspoon chopped tarragon, season with three tablespoons dressing, mix thoroughly, add two tablespoons mayonnaise and mix well again. Neatly clean and thoroughly drain six small white leaves of lettuce, place a light half teaspoon Russian caviare on each, nicely arrange around sides of bowl and serve.
A composed salad of the old restaurant kind: everything is cooked and chilled separately, then bound at the last moment. The work is in the prep, not the assembly.
- "Three tablespoons dressing"The recipe does not say what kind; in books of this sort it normally means a plain French dressing of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, commonly around three parts oil to one of vinegar. Adding it before the mayonnaise lets the vegetables and potato take up acid and salt, so the mayonnaise coats rather than soaks.
- Everything cold and dryThe hinge of the dish. Vegetables still warm will thin the mayonnaise and turn the bowl watery within minutes; potato in particular must be cooled fully before dicing. Drain the beans, asparagus and shrimp on a towel.
- Dice sizeThe recipe says only "small squares." A uniform dice of about a quarter-inch for the root vegetables and potato works well, so a forkful carries several elements; the lobster and shrimp can be a little larger.
- AnchoviesTwelve oil-packed fillets, not twelve whole salted fish. Tinned fillets vary a good deal in saltiness, so hold back on added salt until you have tasted the finished mix.
- PicklesSour cucumber pickles such as cornichons or gherkins suit the dish better than sweet ones. Six small pickles, sliced, comes to roughly two tablespoons.
- Chervil and tarragonChervil wilts and loses its anise note quickly, so chop it just before it goes in. If you cannot get it, use a little more tarragon plus parsley rather than doubling the tarragon alone, which will dominate.
- CaviareA half teaspoon on each of six lettuce leaves is about a tablespoon total. Any firm-grained roe works; spoon it with a non-metal spoon and add it at the moment of serving so the grains do not weep into the leaf.
- YieldSix lettuce cups around the bowl suggests six servings as a first course. Assemble no more than an hour ahead and keep refrigerated; the salad is best the day it is made.
Salade russe is generally associated with the grand restaurants rather than with Russian home cooking, though how it travelled west is not well documented. Its ancestor is generally traced to the salad served at the Hermitage in Moscow in the 1860s by the chef Lucien Olivier, whose recipe was famously never recorded but was widely imitated and steadily simplified — first into this restaurant version of shellfish and diced vegetables, later into the potato-and-pea salad still eaten across Russia and Eastern Europe at New Year. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, was writing for cooks who expected a menu to travel, and the dish belongs to a moment when a bowl labelled "Russian" signalled expense: lobster, shrimp, anchovy, tarragon and a dab of caviare on every leaf. The technique — cook, chill, dice small, dress twice — is pure late-nineteenth-century professional practice, and it is the reason the salad holds its shape on a buffet table.