Ruska Salata

The story

Ruska salata, a salad of potatoes, carrots, peas, pickles, ham, and mayonnaise, is a regular on the festive Serbian table, and its name carries the trace of a longer journey than one might expect. Its origins are linked to “Olivier salad,” created in Moscow in the 1860s by Lucien Olivier, a chef of Belgian and French descent, for his restaurant, the Hermitage; from there it spread across all of Eastern and Central Europe under various local names, from “Russian salad” in the Balkans to “salade russe” in Western Europe. Over time each country simplified the original, more luxurious recipe (which included game birds and crayfish) down to more affordable ingredients—potatoes, carrots, peas, pickles, ham, mayonnaise. In Serbian families, ruska salata is a frequent side to roast meat on the holiday table, made a day ahead and kept in the refrigerator. For Serbian families in the diaspora, this salad is one of the easiest introductions to Serbian cooking for guests from outside the community, since the idea of “potato salad with mayonnaise” is recognized almost everywhere.