Herring under a fur coat is everyone's favorite salad, which often decorates the festive table of our citizens. The combination of salted and oily fish with sweet vegetables gives the dish a unique taste. If before in the Soviet Union there were few products for creating culinary masterpieces and people used beets, carrots and potatoes available to everyone, now the choice is huge. New recipes are available that the Internet is full of, but such a simple salad is still present at all feasts.
In addition, this dish overgrows with time many legends about who invented herring under a fur coat when this dish appeared on the tables of our parents, which preceded its appearance as a beautifully decorated festive dish.
Norwegian roots
The history of herring under a fur coat goes far from our country to the northern Scandinavian countries, which have always been famous for an excess of this tasty fish.
In Norwegian cookbooks of 1851, you can find a similar recipe called Sillsallad, which in Russian means herring salad. The recipe included herring, which was laid on the bottom of a large plate, on top of it lay boiled beets, sliced in thin circles carrots, eggs. However, all the ingredients were not mixed.
English equivalent
Many culinary historians have looked for the answer to the question of who invented herring under a fur coat. A similar recipe was found in an 1845 English cookbook called Swedish Salad. The components of this salad also resemble the dish we are exploring. This is Norwegian herring, which was peeled, cut into pieces and laid out on a dish. They covered it with layers of sliced beets, potatoes, chopped eggs, and added more pickles and grated apple.
Recipe in Russian sources
From the second half of the 19th century and in Russian cookbooks, one can trace the history of the salad recipe "herring under a fur coat". Although this dish was created, of course, without mayonnaise and more like a vinaigrette. The ingredients present in such a salad are incredibly similar to a herring under a fur coat. These are the same boiled beets, diced potatoes, as well as carrots.
Much later, mayonnaise sauce is gaining popularity, which is used by people around the world. This salad also did not escape the addition of this popular sauce, and from about 1960 a version of the modern, such puff dish with mayonnaise, traditional for the Russian feast, appeared.
A beautiful legend of Soviet times
If you are interested in the question of who came up with herring under a fur coat, then on numerous Internet sites you can read the legend about the origin of this popular dish. It sounds as follows.
In Moscow and Tver, a innkeeper named Anastas Bogomilov in 1918 thought about the state of affairs in his establishments. Many visitors, after a good portion of the drink, began to row and fight, thus figuring out the relationship on a political basis. After all, people from different classes visited the inn, of course, that alcohol quickly untied their tongues, and eternal disputes began.
A certain Aristarkh Prokoptsev worked as a cook in the tavern, and the owner gave the task to come up with a salad that would be nutritious and high-calorie so that people would not get so drunk and fight in his taverns. He suffers terrible losses, because after the fight, broken dishes, furniture, windows, etc. remain. Not to mention the fact that people are simply afraid to go to his taverns and pass them by.
Aristarchus Prokoptsev approached the matter creatively. He deciphered the composition of the selected ingredients as follows:
- the herring is a symbol of the proletariat, since the workers often ordered it and loved it;
- beets - a symbol of the revolutionary red banner;
- other vegetables are root crops (onions, carrots, potatoes), which symbolize the land, and therefore the peasantry;
- mayonnaise is a French sauce that personifies a tribute to the French revolutionaries.
Explanation of the word "fur coat"
If you are interested in the history of herring under a fur coat, you may come across the saying that the word "fur coat", which covers the fish on a plate, is an abbreviation. It is decrypted as follows:
- - means chauvinism.
- U - respectively decline.
- B - stands for boycott.
- And - in full - anathema.
The combination of words sounds like this:
"Chauvinism and Decline - Boycott and Anathema"
The legend ends just fine. Visitors to the restaurant, having tasted the salad for the new year 1919, were incredibly satisfied, no one got drunk anymore, everyone ate a herring under a fur coat, which became a popular salad, and things got better in the tavern.
Exposing a legend
Since then, many have been interested in the question: "Who invented a herring under a fur coat in reality?" Culinary historians studied ancient Russian and Soviet cookbooks and came to the disappointing conclusion: a beautiful legend has absolutely no evidence of its veracity. There was no innkeeper Anastas Bogomilov and cook Aristarchus Prokoptsev. And in the first edition of the cookery book in Soviet Russia, such a recipe was not found.
The first mention of such a salad was found in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was during this period that mayonnaise sauce gained popularity, in many countries they began to use it, replacing ordinary salads with layered ones. Each ingredient was crushed, laid separately and coated with mayonnaise.
In the video presented, you will see where the herring was invented under a fur coat, what dishes preceded its appearance.
Recipe
After we have found out in detail the origin of this dish, let's look at how to cook it. This is a layered salad, which includes, in addition to herring, several other components. Beets should be taken sweet, maroon, fresh, not sluggish.
Light and unsweetened beets can significantly affect the taste characteristics of a dish. You also need to boil carrots. Potatoes are selected the same size and variety, which does not boil. Before cutting vegetables for salad, they must be cooled.
How to choose a delicious herring?
Before buying the ingredients for the classic salad "herring under a fur coat" you need to learn how to choose a herring. It happens 3 types of salting. In salted herring, the eyes are red. It is usually fatter. Medium-salted fish should be resilient when touched. There should not be any “rusty” brown spots on it, nor cracks and scratches. If they are on the body of the fish, this means that it was overexposed in salt, and the temperature regime of salting was not observed.
If the fish’s eyes become cloudy, it may be with caviar. Many love her, but be prepared that there will be less flesh and fat. The herring gave all its life stocks for the maturation of the offspring. If the fish is covered with a white coating, this indicates poor-quality salt, in which harmful impurities were present.
The most delicious herring is males. They can be recognized by a narrow and elongated mouth. They are more fat and fleshy. If the herring has a round mouth - this is a female. Caviar can be located in her stomach, which means that there will be very little meat, mainly on the back. And as mentioned above, females are not so fat.
Also, when buying herring, you need to pay attention to the condition of the brine in which it was salted. It should be transparent. If you see a cloudy liquid, and even smell an unpleasant odor, do not take risks, but look for it in another store.
Stages of salad preparation "herring under a fur coat"
After you have purchased the necessary products, well-salted herring, potatoes, onions, carrots and dark beets, you can start cooking. First you need to thoroughly clean the herring, remove the skin, take away all the bones and rinse it under wastewater. Pure boneless fillet should be sliced. This will be the first layer of our layered salad.
Onion is laid on top of the herring. You can use onions, some like a fresh green onion. Onion is cut into thin half rings or cubes and poured on top of the fish. You can pickle the onions first using water, vinegar and a spoonful of sugar, or you can just scald them with boiling water so that all the bitterness comes out of it. Mayonnaise is spread on top of a layer of fish with onions.
Next are layers of potatoes, carrots, which are also smeared with mayonnaise. Beets are traditionally placed on top. On top of a layer of mayonnaise, some are sprinkled with finely chopped egg or chives.
Salads are made differently: some cut the vegetables into cubes, and some rub them on a grater. Herring looks beautiful under a roll-shaped fur coat. They make out the salad before serving with olives or figurines of vegetables, draw a grid with mayonnaise, add greens.
In the article we examined in detail who invented the herring under a fur coat and how to make it according to the classic recipe.