Look at Wikipedia, actually don’t I have done it for you, and there is a long list of comestibles and drinks named after people. Only a few are familiar today: peach Melba, tournedos Rossini, beef Wellington, oysters Rockefeller, beef Carpaccio, omelette Arnold Bennett, Bellini cocktails and you will know others.
You mighty not have heard of Olivier salad and you might think it was a favourite of Laurence Olivier and you’d be wrong on both counts. You have had Olivier salad under another name if you are around my age – it was tinned. When PG Wodehouse changed some of Cole Porter’s lyrics for You’re the Top he substituted Russian salad for Waldorf salad. The latter is still famous but when did you last have Russian salad? It is an enduring favourite in Eastern European countries, particularly at Christmas and New Year, and when made with fresh ingredients a delicious concoction far removed from the tinned puke we had at Castle Park. Did Heinz call it Sandwich Spread?
“The original version of the salad was invented in the 1860s by a cook of French and Belgian origin, Lucien Olivier, the chef of the Hermitage, one of Moscow’s most celebrated restaurants. Olivier’s salad quickly became immensely popular with Hermitage regulars, and became the restaurant’s signature dish.
One of the first printed recipes for Olivier salad, by Aleksandrova, appearing in 1894, called for half a hazel grouse, two potatoes, one small cucumber (or a large cornichon), 3–4 lettuce leaves, 3 large crayfish tails, 1/4 cup cubed aspic, 1 teaspoon of capers, 3–5 olives, and 1 1⁄2 tablespoons Provençal dressing (mayonnaise). As often happens with gourmet recipes which become popular, the ingredients which were rare, expensive, seasonal, or difficult to prepare were gradually replaced with cheaper and more readily available foods.” (Wikipedia)
I’d like to see it on menus again but called by its original name: Olivier salad.
Great stuff! Tinned muck is such a great reminder of the late ,great Barry Humphries..anyone remember him using the sick bag ,in mid-flight…where he had previously hidden some diced veg.muck and then having ‘used the bag as intended’ promptly proceeded to eat the contents?! Apologies in advance. But best use ever of tinned muck! Thanks Possum!
I make this from time to time, especially for my sister-in-law, who is a fan. Cutting up the ingredients in small dice is somehow quite satisfying. I won’t be adding any hazel grouse to mine, but crayfish tails sound like a good addition. I’d use some small shrimp, also diced, I think, instead. No one I know makes this more complex and much nicer version of potato salad, or has even heard of it, here in the US where I live. We certainly didn’t have to suffer through it in cans!