Lettuce is one of the vegetable crops. In ancient times, wild lettuce was cultivated in Ancient Egypt. A little bit later lettuce leaves eaten in Ancient Greece confident that they will improve digestion and promote sound sleep... So what is more from lettuce - harm or good?

On the territory of Russia, the salad appeared only in the 18th century, but for quite a long time it did not enjoy much popularity. Even now, many people are convinced that its role is purely decorative, but ... The benefits of lettuce for the human body are invaluable, since many useful substances are hidden in these green leaves, and the culture itself is dietary.

Lettuce can be bought in the markets and in the vegetable section of the supermarket. V fresh lettuce (many of its varieties are known - arugula, romano, frisse, iceberg, lettuce) should not be stored for more than a week. He will be comfortable on the lower shelves of the refrigerator, where the temperature is higher than on the upper ones. To choose a high-quality bunch of greens, you must adhere to following rules:

- the plant should be monochromatic, there should be no spots or blotches on it;

- the leaves, upon a superficial examination, should not contain signs that the leaves are eaten or torn (this is a clear evidence of the inadequate quality of the goods presented);

- purchase exclusively dry salad - in the market, sellers can sprinkle the leaves with water so that they retain their presentation all day; you need to eat such greens right away - in the refrigerator it will hold out at most for several hours.

What's in lettuce?

Lettuce, the benefits of which will be discussed more, is the leader in calcium content. According to experts, even cottage cheese and milk are not much ahead of it.

There is also vitamin K in this vegetable crop, which has an effect on the correct blood clotting.

It is quite difficult to get manganese from other products, and there is not only a lot of it in a salad, but the body is also able to assimilate manganese in full.

Nutritional value and calorie content of lettuce

Lettuce is low in calories and dietary product... The calorie content of 100 grams is in the range from 14 to 25 kilocalories. One small bunch weighs about 250 grams, and one medium branch weighs about ten.

The nutritional value of the salad is as follows: one and a half grams of protein, two tenths of fat and two grams of carbohydrates. Water accounts for 94 grams, everything else is alimentary fiber, mono- and disaccharides.

Useful properties of lettuce

This plant is a natural neuron stimulant. Salad may well serve as a substitute for chocolate or other sweets during great mental stress, enriching brain cells with oxygen and nourishing them with useful substances.

Vegetable culture can, with regular use, slightly reduce the amount of cholesterol, reduce the likelihood of developing heart attacks, strokes, help in cleaning blood vessels.

Vegetable crops contain magnesium, which can have a positive effect in strengthening nervous system person. Magnesium can calm, stop or even prevent the development of nervous diseases.

Due to the fact that in the composition of lettuce leaves there are special substances that have a sedative effect on the body (their action is similar to that of alkaloids), then with frequent use lettuce, the blockage of nerve pathogens occurs. This is how insomnia can be dealt with.

Greens will be useful in season colds, helping to strengthen the immune system and assisting in the recovery of the body. In addition, lettuce has mucus-thinning and bronchial expectorant properties.

Lettuce leaves will improve digestion, accelerate the metabolism of lipids and fats, help the digestion of nutrients in the intestines, remove toxins and toxins, and release harmful cholesterol.

If you constantly add vegetable crops to your diet, this will be a good prevention of cancer.

The juice of this plant can slightly improve blood composition, lower sugar levels and be beneficial for anemia. The salad will strengthen the blood vessels, which will become more elastic over time.

Vitamin A, in tandem with potassium, can improve hair and skin health.

Carotenoids and iodine slow down the onset of Alzheimer's disease and support visual function.

Lettuce: benefits for women

It should be noted that the salad is beneficial for women due to the content of folic acid in it, which will help expectant mothers to regulate hormonal balance and will help restore fertility. The likelihood of miscarriage or premature birth is somewhat reduced.

Water infusion on the seeds of this salad will enhance lactation and improve quality breast milk... Thanks to the calcium, the salad will help in the formation of healthy muscle and bone tissue.

Such a plant is very useful to add to the food of expectant mothers, because it will help make the intrauterine development of the baby complete.

The benefits of lettuce: cosmetic recipes

Women of different ages Green salad has long been used to maintain the beauty of skin and curls. Beneficial effect lettuce for the face is as follows. In the usual cosmetic masks that many women use, it is useful to add crushed leaves to saturate the skin with life-giving moisture. With time appearance will undergo slight changes: the skin will become more elastic and velvety.

If a woman's face is no longer so fresh, and peeling processes begin, it will help next lineup:

- grind seven or ten leaves of lettuce;

- add three tablespoons of cream, yogurt or sour cream.

Mix all ingredients well.

The time during which the mask should act is a quarter of an hour.

The benefits of lettuce should be remembered when you want to increase the elasticity of the skin. The composition is prepared as follows:

- three to four tablespoons of leaf gruel;

- a teaspoon of lemon juice;

- a tablespoon of olive or corn oil.

Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

On the face, such a mask should be about twenty minutes.

What are the benefits of lettuce in the process of losing weight?

Many girls and women quite often think about how to lose those extra pounds, turning from "plump" into "skinny". In this they will be helped by the same leaf salad due to its fiber content. It is fiber that burns fat accumulation, perfectly fights against bouts of constipation, stimulates intestinal motility, improves digestion and cleanses the intestines in a very gentle form.

A dish containing a lettuce makes women feel full long time... It is the salad that is a recognized natural diuretic, helping to get rid of excess fluid and toxins. This quality is very important for people trying to lose weight. If you combine juices of beets, carrots and lettuce (in equal proportions), not only the body, but also the blood will be cleansed of toxins.

Two words on the culinary theme. If you need to add lettuce leaves to a dish, you do not need to cut them with a knife. Leaves are torn by hand. The dressing is added just before serving the dish.

To neutralize the bitterness of arugula or salads - mustard and oak - they are pre-soaked in salted water for ten minutes. When preparing salads for weight loss, you can add some nuts to them, which are combined with leafy vegetables. Vegetable oils, yogurt or sour cream are suitable as a dressing.

The benefits of lettuce for men

The presence of B vitamins in lettuce will strengthen male body in general, but their lack will provoke insomnia, irritability, numbness of the limbs, the man will quickly get tired.

Doctor's advice. If you feel nervous, anxious, or diminished in energy, you should include dishes containing fresh lettuce in your menu. It goes well with fish, shrimps, nuts, fermented milk products and greens.

The positive qualities of this leaf culture are appreciated by athletes, because with the help of the salad, the negative symptoms that occur after heavy exertion are slightly smoothed out.

Hair growth is improved thanks to the salad. Healing properties"Curly" doctors are that the tincture of lettuce leaves is able to penetrate quite deeply into the epidermis, where it will nourish the hair roots well; in addition, it remains possible to restore cells that were previously damaged.

How can lettuce harm human health?

Before you include lettuce in your menu, the benefits and harms from it for the body of each person must be adequately assessed. In one case, thanks to leafy vegetables, healing effect, and in the other, a deterioration in the functioning of the body will be provoked.

There is a lot of oxalic acid in salad greens. It is she who will cause harm in the presence of diseases. Bladder or kidneys.

Doctor's advice. You should not use lettuce (the harm from which, unfortunately, is also there) in food for those patients whose body is prone to increased gas production, that is, flatulence.

The rate of use of lettuce

According to the advice of doctors, it is necessary to eat at least one hundred grams of this leafy vegetable per day. For example, this is how much one large bunch or two glasses of chopped vegetables will weigh.

Pediatricians are allowed to introduce lettuce leaves into the children's diet after the baby is one and a half to two years old.

If you offer lettuce for food to children, it should be borne in mind that until the child has reached the age of 12, the portion must be halved.

Igor Sokolsky, Candidate of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

- Do you remember "The Bear"?
- Yes. At the counter. True, a glass of lemon vodka cost fifty dollars, but for the same fifty dollars the friendly barmen literally forced you to have a snack: fresh caviar, jellied duck, Cumberland sauce, Olivier salad, game cheese.
A. T. Averchenko. Shards of the shattered

The luxurious white hall of the Hermitage restaurant (photo from the early 20th century). Every year, until 1917, on January 12, according to the old style, professors from Moscow University came here to celebrate Tatiana's day.

Science and Life // Illustrations

You can learn about what the "Cumberland sauce" mentioned in the epigraph is by opening the "Culinary Guide" of the king of French cuisine Auguste Escoffier. It turns out that this sauce originates from the county of Cumberland, in northern England, and is served with dishes made from wild animals. It consists of red currant jelly, port wine, shallots, lemon and orange peel, lemon and orange juice, mustard, cayenne pepper and ginger powder.

The "game cheese" recipe is often found in European cookbooks. it cold appetizer, which is prepared from fried game meat (hazel grouse, black grouse, pheasant, partridge), which is turned into minced meat and mixed with butter, grated cheese, wine, strong meat broth, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Serve in portioned tins or dough baskets.

It is much more difficult to establish the composition of the salad, which was invented in the 1860s in Moscow, on Trubnaya Square, at number 14 on Petrovsky Boulevard, the corner of Neglinnaya, which now houses the Moscow Theater of the Modern Play.

In adoring the secrets of the mass media and on the Internet, it is said that the creator of the salad, Lucien Olivier, who rests in the Vvedensky (former German) cemetery in Moscow, took the recipe with him to his grave. But if the recipe is buried together with the author, why then in our country no holiday is complete without preparing a salad named after him, which has become not only an indispensable part of the family festive table, but also a part of Russian culinary history? Let's try to figure out where the secret is, and where is its visibility.

First there was a salad that was invented by the French chef Lucien Olivier, one of the owners of the Hermitage restaurant, located in the house where the theater is now. Very soon Moscow food lovers began to call this dish by the name of the owner, despite the fact that Olivier himself called it "Game Mayonnaise".

In 1899 Pelageya Pavlovna Alexandrova-Ignatieva (1872-1953), teacher culinary excellence Of the Imperial Women's Patriotic Society, published the main work of her life - the book "Practical Foundations of Culinary Art", which went through twelve editions, the last of which was in the printing house of the Financial Department of the Leningrad Governmental Executive Committee in 1927. It was not only a real textbook on the art of cooking, but also a monument of the era, which preserved for us the cooking techniques and recipes of those times. Among the list of recipes, it also contains Olivier salad.

Once again, the salad recipe appeared in 1899 in the book by K. K. Morokhovtsev "A complete gift for young housewives." The clearly invented author's surname and the title of the book suggest that she is typical example existence on the promoted brand “Elena Molokhovets. A present for young housewives. " The appearance of this and similar editions forced E. Molokhovets, in whose book there is no recipe for Olivier salad, to put an autographed stamp on the first page of his editions.

The newly-minted gift to housewives at number 769 contains a recipe for Olivier salad, for the preparation of which are used hazel grouses, potatoes, veal tongue, pressed caviar, lettuce leaves, boiled crayfish or canned lobster, pickles, soy-kabul, Provencal sauce, fresh cucumbers, capers, steep eggs.

Another revival legendary salad under the name "Stolichny" took place in the thirties of the XX century in the restaurant "Moscow", whose chefs, perhaps, remembered the taste of real Olivier. Experts surviving by that time haute cuisine argued that this salad tasted little different from its famous predecessor.

And in the "Book of delicious and healthy food", Which was published in 1939 and became the first large cookbook in the USSR, you can find a recipe for Olivier salad, hiding under the modest name" Game salad ".

In the end, the salad disappeared from the pages of cookbooks, completely out of the control of restaurant chefs and, retaining only three ingredients of real Olivier: potatoes, cucumbers and boiled eggs, continued to live in the vast country. The most common composition of Olivier salad, which you will be treated to in almost any home, includes six ingredients: boiled potatoes, hard eggs, boiled sausage or chicken, pickled, fresh or pickled cucumbers, green pea, mayonnaise.

The rumor that Lucien Olivier took the salad recipe with him to the grave arose out of an obvious misunderstanding caused by the writer, an expert on Moscow life, Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky. In the book “Moscow and Muscovites” he wrote: “It was considered a special chic when the meals were prepared by the French chef Olivier, who even then became famous for the“ Olivier salad ”invented by him, without which lunch is not at lunchtime and the secret of which he did not reveal. No matter how hard the gourmets tried, it didn’t come out: this and not that ”.

The misunderstood idea of ​​Uncle Gilyay that only in the golden hands of Lucien Olivier could a special salad taste that conquered Moscow gourmets, as well as the inappropriate use of the word "mystery", gave rise to a legend. After the death of Lucien Olivier, his salad existed in the Hermitage for a long time. It was prepared by both the chefs who served in the Medved restaurant, which was in St. Petersburg on Konyushennaya, and the chefs of the famous Moscow tavern Testov, evidence of which can be found in the same Gilyarovsky's description of his dinner with friends: rubles ... We started at first "under the herring." - For rhyme, as I.F.Gorbunov used to say: vodka is a herring. Then under the Achuevskaya caviar, then under the granular one with a tiny pie of burbot liver, a glass of first white cold smirnov with ice, and then it, tinted with a picon (bitter tinted tincture with a strength of 21% - I.S.), we drank English under the brains and bison with salad Olivier ... "

Forgotten recipes

Olivier salad from the book by P. P. Alexandrova "Practical Foundations of Culinary Art" (1899)

Essential products and their proportion per person. Grouse - ½ pcs. Potatoes - 2 pcs. Cucumbers - 1 pc. Salad - 3-4 leaves. Provencal - 1½ tbsp l. Cancer necks - 3 pcs. Lanspeek - ¼ glass. Kaportsa - 1 tsp Olives - 3-5 pcs.

Cut the fillets of fried good hazel grouse into blankets and mix with blankets of boiled, not crumbly potatoes and slices fresh cucumbers, add the capores and olives and pour over big amount Provencal sauce, with the addition of soy-kabul. After cooling, transfer to a crystal vase, remove with crayfish tails, lettuce leaves and chopped lanspeck. Serve very cold. Fresh cucumbers can be replaced with large gherkins. Instead of hazel grouse, you can take veal, partridge and chicken, but real snack Olivier is certainly prepared from hazel grouse.

Note. Blankets (from the French blanc - pure, white) - straight, parallel lines cut pieces of food used as semi-finished products for making dishes and culinary products... Lanspeek - boiled meat jelly, chicken bouillon... Soy-kabul, or kabul sauce, is a popular spice seasoning at one time, originating from Afghanistan. Kaportsa - capers, salted or pickled flower buds of the thorny capers plant.

"Game Salad" from "The Book of Delicious and Healthy Food" (1939)

For one hazel grouse (boiled or fried) - 300 g of boiled potatoes, 75 g of gherkins or pickles, 75 g of green salad, 2 eggs, ½ cup of mayonnaise sauce, ½ tbsp. soy-kabul spoons, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of vinegar, ¼ teaspoon icing sugar, salt to taste.

Cut the hazel grouse fillet, potatoes, gherkins, half a hard-boiled egg into thin slices, and 3-4 pieces of dried lettuce leaves. Place in a bowl, season with salt and mayonnaise, add soy-kabul, vinegar or lemon juice. Put the dressed salad in a slide in a salad bowl. Place lettuce leaves in the center of the slide, and around, along the oval, decorate with eggs, cut into quarters, in circles fresh cucumber and pieces of pickles. You can decorate the salad with crayfish tails, pieces of crab, as well as slices of tomatoes. Such a salad can be prepared from various game or poultry, meat, veal, etc.

Capital salad

Poultry or game (cooked) 60 g, potatoes 60 g, fresh, pickled or pickled cucumbers 40 g, green salad 10 g, crayfish necks 10 g, eggs 2 pcs., South sauce 15 g, mayonnaise 70 g, pickles 10 g, olives 10 pcs.

Boiled or fried poultry or game, boiled peeled potatoes, fresh, pickled or pickled cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, cut into thin slices (2-2.5 cm), and finely chop the leaves of green lettuce. Mix all this, season with mayonnaise sauce, add Southern sauce for taste. After mixing, put the salad in a slide in a salad bowl and arrange in circles or wedges hard egg, slices of pickles, lettuce, circles of fresh cucumbers. On the salad, you can put beautifully cut game fillets, crayfish necks or pieces canned crabs and olives.

Homebrew salad

4 potatoes, 2 carrots, 2 fresh (pickled) cucumbers, 3 eggs, a jar (300 g) of green peas, 300 g of ham (doctor's sausage, boiled meat, fillet smoked chicken), 100 g of mayonnaise, salt.

Boil potatoes, carrots, eggs, cut into small cubes, add sliced ​​cucumbers, ham (sausage, etc.), put green peas, mayonnaise, mix gently.

Russians are idealists and great inventors. Russian Sherlock Holmes is the most sincere of all existing, films about cowboys are kind and thoroughly imbued with the Russian spirit, but what to say about the famous "Three Musketeers" ... Well, unless the French pedants can be compared with the charming Boyarsky with a radiant smile. The same thing happens not only in cinema, but also in Russian cuisine. A lot of dishes from other people's cuisines are processed according to our needs, acquiring a new, and sometimes completely different taste in our conditions. So it happened with the Olivier salad. The history of Olivier salad is known to few. The famous Olivier salad was invented by a French chef in Russia in the second half of the 19th century, and the name of the famous chef is misleading to many. Nevertheless, the fact is the fact. Lucien Olivier is the founder of the famous Hermitage restaurant, as well as the author of a magnificent and still living salad.

The elite restaurant Hermitage was built by Lucien Olivier after years life in Moscow, when he realized what was missing in the Russian capital. Not enough French chic... Joining forces with the wealthy merchant Yakov Pegov, Olivier buys a plot in the center of Moscow and intends to build a first-class restaurant based on the best French examples. By the mid-60s of the 19th century, on the site of a booth selling snuff, a chic building with white columns, crystal chandeliers with isolated offices and luxurious interiors arose. It was a novelty for Moscow then, and the nascent bourgeoisie poured into the restaurant. At first, Olivier's establishment was called a Tavern in the Russian way, and the waiters were also dressed in a "tavern way". The following facts can tell about the importance and popularity of the restaurant: in 1879, a gala dinner was held in the Hermitage in honor of I.S. Turgenev, in 1880 - in honor of F.M. Dostoevsky, in 1899 - the famous celebration of the centenary of Pushkin's birthday, which was attended by all the eminent writers and poets of that time. In the Hermitage, university professors celebrated anniversaries and students celebrated Tatiana's Day, intellectuals gathered and rich merchants feasted. All in all, Olivier's restaurant, like its excellent cuisine, attracted the best people of the time.

Lucien Olivier, the youngest of the three Olivier brothers, from whom the history of Olivier salad began, when he was very young, went to work in Moscow. Like many Frenchmen, he hoped to apply his culinary skills in a country that had always respected French cuisine... While his brothers were cooking for French gourmets, Lucien opened his Hermitage restaurant. At first, the business brought in significant income, and the young Frenchman cooked dishes familiar from childhood. This success was largely due to the "family" recipe-improvement of mayonnaise sauce or mayonnaise. In the Olivier family, at the beginning of the 19th century, they began to add mustard in the manufacture of sauce, as well as several secret spices, which made the taste of the familiar sauce slightly spicy. The popularity of the Olivier family's mayonnaise was so strong that it allowed the older brothers to keep their business in France, and Lucien to open a Moscow "branch" on Trubnaya Square. The building in which the restaurant was located has survived to this day, it is house number 14 on Petrovsky Boulevard, the corner of Neglinnaya. So someday a commemorative plaque or a whole monument to Olivier's Salad may appear on it.

But everything is transient in this world, and gradually sauce alone became not enough for the success of the establishment. His taste quickly became boring, and the changeable fashion swung in the direction of skinny pale young ladies, whose beauty, of course, was interfered with by Olivier's mouth-watering and high-calorie sauces. It was necessary to come up with something urgently. And then Lucien Olivier came up with new salad, a genuine work of art. Its taste was so exquisite that it instantly brought fame to the Frenchman as a great chef, and the popularity of his restaurant, which was beginning to fade away, flared up with renewed vigor. Visitors named the new salad Olivier Salad, which was quite in keeping with the traditions of Russian names. Since then, the name Olivier has become a household name, and they tried to repeat the salad countless times, in the end, simplifying the recipe so much that its modern version is the exact opposite of the original. Many chefs tried to repeat Olivier's recipe, but, not knowing all the ingredients, they inevitably suffered a fiasco - the taste of a real Olivier Salad could only be appreciated in the Hermitage restaurant.

The taste of the famous dish was largely obtained due to Monsieur Olivier's own mayonnaise recipe. It was said that the Frenchman jealously kept the recipe and carried out the operation to prepare it in a special room behind a closed door. The sauce route was not easy. Originally Olivier made a sauce called Game Mayonnaise. It consisted of boiled fillets of hazel grouse and partridges, interlaced with layers of broth jelly. Boiled crayfish necks and small pieces of tongue lay along the edges of the dish. All this was flavored with a little Provencal sauce self-made... In the center, the structure was decorated with a pile of potatoes with gherkins and slices of boiled eggs as decoration. At the same time, according to the author's intention, the central potato part was intended more for beauty. Once Lucien Olivier noticed that some Russians who ordered this dish immediately broke the whole idea, stirring the whole structure with a spoon, and devoured this tasty mass... The next day, an enterprising Frenchman mixed all the ingredients and poured thick sauce over them. This is how the birth happened famous salad, transformed from an exquisite but uncomfortable "game mayonnaise" into a no less refined, but closer to the Russian soul, "Olivier salad".

Here is the recipe for the classic "Olivier salad" prepared in better times in the Hermitage restaurant (restored in 1904 according to the descriptions of one restaurant patron):

Fillet of two boiled hazel grouses,

One boiled veal tongue

About 100 grams of pressed black caviar,

200 grams fresh leaves salad,

25 boiled crawfish or one large lobster

200-250 grams of small cucumbers,

Half a can of soybean kabul (soybean paste),

2 finely chopped fresh cucumbers

100 grams of capers,

5 finely chopped, hard-boiled eggs

Provencal dressing: 400 grams of olive oil, whipped with two fresh egg yolks, with addition French vinegar and mustard.

One of the secrets classic taste salad Olivier consisted in the addition of some spices by the Frenchman. Unfortunately, the composition of these spices is unknown, therefore true taste lettuce can only be represented according to the descriptions of contemporaries.

The preparation itself was just as exciting:

Fry the hazel grouses in a 1-2 centimeter layer of oil over a high flame for 5-10 minutes. Then put them in boiling water or broth (beef or chicken), add 150 ml of Madeira to 850 ml of broth, 10-20 pitted olives, 10-20 small champignons and simmer for 20-30 minutes over low heat under a lid. When the meat begins to slightly separate from the bones, add salt, let it simmer for a couple of minutes and turn off the flame. Place the saucepan with hazel grouse, without pouring the broth, into a large container with cold water and let cool. The purpose of this is to allow the grouse meat to cool gradually. The fact is that when separated hot, the meat begins to dry out and loses its tenderness. However, it is necessary not to overdo it and separate the warm meat - do not let the hazel grouse freeze, otherwise it will completely cease to be removed from the bones. Wrap the removed meat in foil and place in a cold place. Do not pour the broth after boiling the mushrooms - it will turn out great soup! (if you don't find hazel grouse and decide to replace them with chicken, remember - the chicken must be cut into 2-3 pieces and cook a little longer - 30-40 minutes).

The tongue should be free of fat, lymph nodes, sublingual muscle tissue and mucus. Perhaps half the tongue will suffice. Rinse your tongue thoroughly in cold water, put it in cold water, bring to a boil and cook over low heat with tight closed lid 2-4 hours (the time depends on the age of the owner of the tongue - 2 hours will be enough for a young calf). Half an hour before the tongue is ready, add chopped carrots, parsley root to the same saucepan, onion and a piece of bay leaf. Season with salt 5-10 minutes before the end of cooking. As soon as the tongue is cooked, immediately put it in a container of cold water for 20-30 seconds, then put it on a plate and remove the skin from it (if the tongue still burns your fingers, dip it again in water). After cleaning the tongue, put it back in the broth and quickly bring it to a boil, then turn off the flame and put the saucepan to cool in a large container filled with ice water... Wrap the cooled tongue in foil and place in a cold place.

Cut the caviar into small cubes.

Rinse lettuce leaves thoroughly, dry and chop just before cooking.

Immerse live crayfish washed in cold water in a boiling solution with their heads down. To prepare a solution for cooking crayfish, take: 25 grams of parsley, onions and carrots, 10 grams of tarragon, 30-40 grams of dill, 1 bay leaf, a few peas allspice and 50 grams of salt. After placing the crayfish in boiling water, let the water boil again and cook for another 10 minutes. After turning off the heat, do not take it out immediately, but let the crayfish brew, then cool the pan with the finished crayfish using the above method.

Chop the pickles finely just before mixing.

Mash the soybeans before adding to the salad.

Peel fresh cucumbers and chop finely (not necessarily evenly - you can also "crumble"). Chop the capers finely after drying them.

Eggs should be large and fresh. Do not digest them in any way. Consider this part carefully. The sensation of eggs should be fresh, the protein needs to be tender, not rubbery. Cook for 7-8 minutes, but not 15.

Cut and mix all the ingredients (try to do this gently, moving from bottom to top). Add your own mayonnaise and serve immediately. It is also important to consider the amount of alcohol consumed by guests. The more - the sharper the sauce should be. If the guests are sober, then it would be more logical to fill them with classic mayonnaise in order to appreciate delicate taste all ingredients.

This was the recipe at the time of its reproduction by one of the restaurant's regular customers. Perhaps something was not taken into account, but the main components that are difficult to hide from the sophisticated public are present in the recipe. Unfortunately, the secret of the spices that made the taste of the dish special and unique has been lost. After the death of Lucien Olivier in 1883, the Hermitage restaurant went to the "Olivier partnership", for a long time the restaurant passed from hand to hand, and famous recipe went to the rich houses of the capital, or rather to the kitchens of these houses. The personal chefs of many of the richest people in the capital tried to recreate the recipe French master and offered to dinner parties this famous salad. This situation could have lasted forever, if not for the First World War, and then the 1917 revolution. The abrupt disappearance of many foods hit Olivier's salad hard. At that time, there was no time for delights - for many years the country plunged into the darkness of timelessness, and from the food side - into severe hunger and the rationing system of food distribution. But already in 1924, the era of the New Economic Policy begins and the country again appears, it seemed, irretrievably gone products. However, much has already been unable to return. The branded "bourgeois" hazel grouses or crayfish necks became inaccessible, and they were simply irrelevant among the then townspeople. The NEP times presented us with several salad options. One of these restaurants, and I must say the central one at that time, since the highest party workers dined there, was the Moscow restaurant. It was headed by Ivan Mikhailovich Ivanov. He retained, albeit in a modified form, the recipe of the famous dish close to the original. And the realities of the time have made their own changes to the recipe.

So, - Olivier Salad recipe according to the Moscow restaurant in the mid-20s of the 20th century:

Ingredients:

6 potatoes

2 onions,

3 medium carrots

2 pickled cucumbers,

200 grams of boiled poultry meat,

1 cup green peas

3 boiled eggs

half a glass of olive mayonnaise,

salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:
Take vegetables of medium size, fresh. Chop all ingredients finely and very evenly into equal pieces. Boil the potatoes and carrots, peel them, chop everything, mix and season with mayonnaise, garnish with parsley and apple slices on top.

In the early 30s, the chef of the Moscow restaurant, Ivan Mikhailovich Ivanov, corrected Lucien Olivier's recipe accordingly, calling the salad “Capital”. This name is not reflected in the 1939 book "On Tasty and Healthy Food", but it does contain "Game Salad", the recipe of which bears a striking resemblance to Olivier's salad. Reached before cookbook 1955 "Capital Salad" has an adapted, but, nevertheless, close to the original composition.

Capital salad.

Ingredients:

60 g of poultry or game,

60 g potatoes

40 g fresh, pickled or pickled cucumbers,

10 g green salad

10 g crayfish necks,

15 g of Southern sauce,

10 g pickles

10 olives.

Preparation:

Boiled or fried poultry or game, boiled peeled potatoes, fresh, pickled or pickled cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, cut into thin slices (2-2.5 cm each). Finely chop the green lettuce leaves. Mix everything, season with mayonnaise, add Southern sauce. Place the salad in a slide in a salad bowl and decorate with circles or slices of a hard egg, slices of pickles, lettuce, and circles of fresh cucumbers. On the salad, you can put beautifully cut game fillets, crayfish tails, or canned crab and olives.

The main principle - to grind everything and season with mayonnaise - became widespread in the vastness of the Soviet and post-Soviet space, gave rise to many variations on the theme of the famous salad, and modern version Olivier salad is called "Russian salad" or "salade a la Russe" all over the world. The hazel grouses were first replaced with partridges, then chicken, and then just sausage. There were also recipes with beef, but this is too tough component, and the beef did not take root. Cancer necks, unfortunately, have sunk into oblivion, and in the 20th century they were no longer added to the salad, instead they were added boiled carrots... Capers were replaced with more affordable green peas, onions appeared in the salad, which is why he immediately acquired pungent taste... Lettuce leaves were replaced with parsley. Soy, veal tongue, like pressed black caviar(and truffles, according to one version), also disappeared from the recipe. ayonese from the one prepared by oneself was replaced with a factory one. Be that as it may, Olivier salad continued to live even in these difficult conditions, being for a large part of an impoverished country a symbol of chic and delicacy. In the post-war period, in the second half of the 50s, when the country experienced strong growth and the standard of living rose again, the old salad reappeared on festive table... Many products returned to the market, but even banal peas or Provencal mayonnaise were in dire shortages, and these products were always set aside to create a "festive" Olivier salad. Simplifying, the Olivier salad recipe acquired the main thing - from quite high-calorie meals, with tasty, but still heavy and expensive components, the salad passed into the category vegetable salad, the meat share of which was incomparably small.

As in the 19th century, modern salad Olivier is made from the products that are most readily available at the moment. If then caviar, crayfish necks, hazel grouses and capers were available, now it is boiled sausage, green peas, carrots and onions. And mayonnaise can be bought at the store. Losing expensive ingredients, the salad inevitably gained popularity among the general population of one-sixth of the planet, and now it can boast not just a name, but the name of a whole class of salads that began to appear in later Soviet time... After all, salad with canned fish, and from crab sticks as well as numerous others Soviet salads appeared thanks to the ingenuity and partly the poverty of the counters, forcing the imagination of housewives and cooks to work. The symbolic significance of Olivier salad for Russian cuisine cannot be overestimated. It is always the main dish on the table, in the best salad bowl, no other salad has such a constant presence on festive feast... The tradition of serving food on plates is indicative. Olivier is always placed either first or next to the potatoes. This is a respectful attitude to simple salad could not hide from the open gaze of foreign guests, who, of course, were also treated to Olivier salad. Throughout the rest of the world, our salad is known as "Russian salad", but it is more correct to call the modern version of the dish "Soviet Olivier". Like "Soviet champagne" it has its own destiny, its own unforgettable taste and is considered the same powerful and indestructible symbol of the holiday.

Photo: Veronika Synenko / Rusmediabank.ru

Eat something healthy, but so that it is tasty and you do not want to eat for a long time! What is the problem? If your diet contains dishes made from lettuce leaves, you will not only discover a world of new amazing taste sensations, forget about hunger, harmful snacks (sandwiches, chocolates, buns), but you will also acquire a "personal cosmetologist and nutritionist" who can improve your appearance and a figure without plastic surgery, super-expensive creams and other beauty novelties.

Some not familiar with green salad consider it a "boring" food preferred only by dieters. Well, what can you cook from it? Unless to chew once, and then when there is no choice. Such thinking "smells" of the remnants of the past post-Soviet times, when they rarely cooked anything from lettuce leaves, and at the mention of "salad" they imagined "herring under a fur coat" or "Olivier".

Today, the trend that has swept almost the entire world has revealed to us a lot of secrets, including culinary ones. And among the popular delicious and healthy foods in the first rows are lettuce leaves: they are inferior only in terms of their beneficial qualities to spinach and broccoli. Green salads are in favor of most cuisines of the world: Italian, French, Greek, etc. Moreover, there are more than a hundred varieties of lettuce: iceberg, frieze, watercress, arugula, romaine, lettuce, radiccho, lolo-rosso and many others.

Salad and five pros to include it in your diet

1.Excellent remedy in the fight against overweight: low-calorie (100/14 calories), stimulates intestinal motility, cleanses the body of toxins, normalizes the digestive tract and reduces appetite

2. The salad contains about 99 microelements and nutrients useful for human health: it contains folic acid and pectins that neutralize bad cholesterol, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, calcium, beta-carotene, vitamins C, A, K, PP, B1, B2. Differs in a high content of vitamin E.

3. In folk medicine, this green vegetable is known for its health properties: prevents anemia, osteoporosis. Due to the presence of antioxidants, vitamin C and beta-keratin, it strengthens and protects against free radicals, thereby reducing the risk of cancer.

4. Cosmetologists regard lettuce leaves, as well as spinach, parsley and other greens, as a super anti-aging agent for the skin: its action occurs at the cellular level. Eating a portion of greens every day, you prolong your youth and prevent the appearance of wrinkles, dryness and sagging skin.

5. Lettuce is an excellent remedy for insomnia, as it improves sleep quality and relieves fatigue due to the content of a substance called lactucaria.

Salad is also delicious: the nuances of cooking

There are no particular difficulties in preparing salad dishes, but some nuances should be taken into account. For example, to stay strong and crisp, it is better to wash them with cold water and serve as soon as something is cooked from them.

The salad is torn by hand, put in whole or cut: although the latter option, according to culinary experts, reduces the taste and useful qualities product. Another thing is to simply randomly tear the leaves with your hands.

Lettuce leaves are combined with almost all products (cheese, nuts, vegetables, fruits, crackers, eggs, seafood, etc.), so you have a great opportunity to show your imagination, and who knows, even create a masterpiece dish.

Bon appetit!

Prudencio Alvarez / Rusmediabank.ru

Italian-style lettuce with croutons

Ingredients:

4 medium sized tomatoes;
- 8 cherry tomatoes;
- lettuce leaves;
- 100 g of butter;
- vegetable oil(olive, flaxseed, corn) to taste;
- 1/2 teaspoon each of dried garlic and salad dressing (you can also use "khmeli-suneli");
- juice of half a lemon;
- half a loaf of bread;
-, salt, black ground pepper taste.

Preparation:

Cut the fresh loaf into cubes and lay out on a baking sheet (do not grease with oil). Put in a small saucepan butter and put it on the fire so that it melts. Let cool slightly, add garlic powder and pepper. Mix well with a spoon and pour the bread slices with the resulting sauce: we make sure that they are well saturated. Then we send everything to the oven and bake the croutons at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes. When you see what the bread slices have acquired golden crust, which means our croutons are ready.

While the croutons are cooling, we are engaged in tomatoes - cut them into small slices, and cherry - in half. Place the vegetables in a salad bowl. We tear lettuce leaves with our hands and send them to the tomatoes. Now it's up to the cheese - we also cut it into cubes or three into coarse grater and add to the rest of the ingredients along with the croutons. Pepper lightly, salt, pour with vegetable oil and lemon juice... Stir and serve.

French salad leaves

Ingredients:

One egg;
- juice of half a lemon;
- 3 tbsp. spoons of sour cream;
- a bunch of lettuce leaves.

Preparation:

Cook egg hard boiled, cool, peel and rub on a coarse grater. Tear the lettuce leaves. Mix all ingredients, pour over sour cream and lemon juice. Salt to taste.

Vitamin salad "Butier" with lettuce from Madonna

Ingredients:

Celery stalk;
- 2 tomatoes;
- 3 pcs. multi-colored bell pepper;
- 1 cucumber;
- 2 artichokes;
- vegetable oil to taste;
- olives and olives;
- almonds;
- greens;
- a bunch of lettuce;
- salt, pepper - to taste.

Preparation:

Peel and cut all vegetables into wedges. Place in a salad bowl, add finely chopped herbs, olives, olives. Season with salt, sprinkle with lemon juice. Mix. Then take flat dish, put lettuce leaves on it and pour on them vegetable mix... You can decorate with radish cut in the form of roses and curly parsley. Sprinkle with chopped almonds on top.

Salad rolls

Ingredients:

Lettuce leaves (Iceberg is ideal, as it is plastic and soft);
- a jar of pitted olives;
- 150 g fat-free cottage cheese;
- 1 tbsp. a spoonful of kefir;
- salt, herbs - to taste.

Preparation:

Chop parsley and dill and mix with cottage cheese, finely chopped olives and kefir. Stir until smooth. Spread the salad leaves with the curd mixture and roll them up. Excellent breakfast and a snack for the office.