It’s hard to imagine any Soviet or post-Soviet Russian holiday table without salad Olivier. The dish was invented by Lucien Olivier, a French chef at one of the fanciest restaurants in the mid-19th century St. Petersburg. The story of this salad is somewhat of a crime novel – the recipe was stolen by Olivier’s assistant and eventually simplified and made affordable for the workers and peasants. You can read the rest of the story here, but this is what you need to know about the salad itself. It is much more filling than a typical green salad. It makes a great appetizer but go easy or you won’t have any room left for the entrée. Finally, thanks to its popularity, the salad has evolved into countless different forms with meat being the most variable ingredient. Beef, chicken, sausage, poached, smoked, roasted – you name it! It’s a good way to dispose of leftover cooked meat as long as it’s still fresh of course. If you want to try to recreate the original fancy Olivier’s version whose secret the chef took to his grave, go shopping or hunting for grouse meat, smoked duck and crayfish tails… just don’t get poached yourself in the process. Here is a recipe for the rest of us serfs: