Russian Salad (Mayonese Salad)

[Baloo]

OK... found it on Wikipedia.. reposted some info here...

hope it's not 'copyright'

from Wikipedia...

The original version of the salad was invented in the 1860s by Lucien Olivier, the chef of the Hermitage restaurant, one of Moscow's most celebrated restaurants. Olivier's salad quickly became immensely popular with Hermitage regulars, and became the restaurant's signature dish.

The exact recipe -- particularly that of the dressing -- was a jealously guarded secret, but it is known that the salad contained grouse, veal tongue, caviar, lettuce, crayfish tails, capers, gherkins, cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs and soy beans. Other reported ingredients included truffles, cubed aspic and smoked duck, although it is possible that the recipe was varied seasonally. The original Olivier dressing was a type of mayonnaise, made with French wine vinegar, mustard, and Provencal olive oil; its exact recipe, however, remains unknown.

At the turn of the 20th century, one of Olivier's sous-chefs, Ivan Ivanov, attempted to steal the recipe. While preparing the dressing one evening, in solitude as was his custom, Olivier was suddenly called away on some emergency. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Ivanov sneaked into Olivier's private kitchen and observed his mise en place, which allowed him to make reasonable assumptions about the recipe of Olivier's famed dressing. Ivanov then left Olivier's employ and went to work as a chef for Moskva, a somewhat inferior restaurant, where he began to serve a suspiciously similar salad under the name "The Capital Salad", (rus: "Stolychnyj", "Столичный"). It was reported by gourmands of the time, however, that the dressing on the Stolychnyj salad was of a lower quality than Olivier's meaning that it was "missing something".

Later, Ivanov sold the recipe for the salad to various publishing houses, which further contributed to its popularization. Due to the closure of the Hermitage restaurant in 1905 and the Olivier family's departure from Russia, the salad could now be referred to as "Olivier".

One of the first printed recipes for the Olivier salad, appearing in 1894, called for half a hazel grouse, two potatoes, one small cucumber (or a large cornichon), 3-4 lettuce leaves, 3 crawfish tails, 1/4 cup aspic, 1 teaspoon of capers and 3-5 olives and provencal dressing (mayonnaise).

As inevitably happens with gourmet recipes which become popularized, those of the salad's ingredients that were rare, expensive, seasonal, or difficult to prepare were gradually replaced with cheaper and more readily available foods, until it evolved (or devolved) into the dish we know today.