It is believed to have originated in Germany or one of the Scandinavian countries. There is reliable information that in one of the cookbooks published in England in 1845, there is a recipe for a Swedish salad, very similar to vinaigrette. It included boiled vegetables and herring.
The French word "vinaigre" translates as "vinegar," hence the name of this salad. However, there is another version of the origin of the name, but it looks too implausible. The Russian Empress Catherine II was served an unfamiliar dish for dinner, after tasting it she wrinkled her nose and said: "Fi! Not warm!" This looks more like a joke, but vinaigrette supposedly became known in Russia at the end of the 18th century, during the reign of Catherine II.
Every housewife has her own secret for making vinaigrette, but its classic composition includes: potatoes, beets, carrots, sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers, eggs. But, some gourmets add to it, in addition to the above ingredients, olives, fresh apples, lemons and so on.
It is also believed that the taste of vinaigrette gives not so much the vegetables as the dressing. In some recipes it is recommended to dress this salad with sunflower oil, in others with olive oil, sesame oil, linseed oil and even mayonnaise. We can say that vinaigrette is the dish, in the preparation of which everyone can realize all his culinary fantasies.
If vinaigrette was known in Russia since the end of the 18th century, then it could be tasted, for example, by the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. It is quite possible, since in the notes to his work "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin mentions a St. Petersburg restaurant "Talon", in which visitors are offered a vinaigrette. The word "vinaigrette" also appears in Dahl's dictionary, where it is explained as "okroshka, but without kvass, with vinegar, mustard, etc., cold, a mixture of sundries".
Since the word "vinaigrette" came to us from France, in the Russian language for a long time there were no unified rules for its spelling. In different sources, you can find such variants as "vinaigrette," "venigrette," "venegrette. It was the publication of the "Explanatory Dictionary" by Vladimir Ivanovich Dal that put an end to such diversity.
The recipe for the traditional New Year's salad "Olivier" in the Soviet Union has undergone significant changes due to the high cost, if not unavailability, of many ingredients. For example, gherkins were replaced by the usual pickles, and grouse by boiled sausage. But the vinaigrette was almost unchanged, as there were no problems with vegetables.
A curious fact - in our country such a popular salad as vinaigrette has a French name. And what is it called in France? It is hard to believe, but the French call it quite differently - "Russian salad". And in Russia, vinaigrette is much more popular than in France.
For holidays, vinaigrette is prepared in our country in huge quantities. But, we should not forget that it is a perishable dish, since it includes pickles and sometimes eggs. Therefore, it should be consumed within the next 24 hours, so that there are no problems with digestion.
Vinaigrette is a low-calorie dish, so, problems with excess weight after eating it, as a rule, do not arise. But, in Russian cookbooks, published in the 19th century, there are recipes for vinaigrettes with meat, fish, crawfish necks and even lobsters. Even M. E. Saltykov-Schedrin mentioned such a vinaigrette in his "Old Town of Poshekhonsky.
In the first half of the 19th century vinaigrette in Russia was made without potatoes, as they hardly took root in our country, and in the 1940s there even were 'potato riots' in some provinces. But after the abolition of serfdom, the potato became a very popular crop.
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