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Salad

Russian Salad

A chilled aspic jelly salad with fish, olives, capers, pickles, and vegetables, finished with egg whites and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Russian Salad

Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Melt the aspic jelly in a pan.

  2. Whip the melted jelly in a bowl over ice water.

  3. Gradually add olive oil and mixed vinegars or lemon juice.

  4. Whip egg whites to froth and stir in just before the jelly firms up.

Assemble and fill

  1. Cut fish into even pieces and mix with olives, capers, and pickles.

  2. Fill the molds with the mixture immediately.

Colour the jelly

  1. For colored jelly, add beet vinegar or pounded lobster spawn for red, mayonnaise for yellow, or spinach juice for green.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lobster + shrimptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together403 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Fish + salmontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Salmon + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Aspic jelly
Provides the gelatin structure that sets the dish into a firm, sliceable body.
Olive oil
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel in the whipped jelly.
Mixed vinegars or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the rich oil.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they lighten the texture of the jelly.
Red fleshed fish
Forms the main protein and the colour-matched centre of the salad.

The step that matters

Add the whipped egg whites just before the jelly firms up. Gelatin sets as it cools. If the egg white foam is folded in too late, it cannot blend evenly and the air bubbles that lighten the texture are lost. If added too early, the foam can collapse and the mixture turns heavy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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