A popular version is that the New Year's dish appeared in 1918, and its ingredients corresponded to one or another social group. We checked how reliable this story is.
Often publications about the origin of a famous salad contain such a story. At the end of 1918, merchant Anastas Bogomilov, who owned taverns in Moscow and Tver, decided to develop a new dish to reconcile visitors to his establishments. Conflicts between them constantly flared up, either on political grounds, or simply because of excessive libations. Chef Aristarkh Prokoptsev came up with a symbolic salad: the herring in it represented the proletariat, the potatoes - the peasants, the beets - the Bolsheviks, and the mayonnaise was intended to remind of the bourgeoisie. The name was also not simple: the supposed fur coat is actually an abbreviation that stands for “Chauvinism and decadence - boycott and anathema.”
This version is mentioned by the authors of the notes on the channel’s website NTV, in the newspaper "New News" and on the portal "Culture.RF». It is also popular on social networks - numerous posts can be found on "VKontakte" and on Facebook, V "Yandex.Zene", Twitter, Instagram, Pikabu And LiveJournal.
Judging by the search results, the story of more than a century ago first became known not so long ago. The earliest mention of it that we were able to find dates back to 2009 - then one of the Wikipedia users suggested add a legend to the salad article. However, colleagues assessed the proposed information as “very controversial”, reproached the proposer for the lack of links to reliable sources and suggested that “most likely, someone really wanted to push their version in order to somehow become famous.”
Despite such doubts, the beautiful legend quickly became popular. Already in 2011, a publication retelling the story appeared, for example, on the TverNews website. December 31, 2013 “legend” mentioned in the story of Channel One, doubting, however, its reliability.
The recipe, supposedly invented shortly after the revolution, was for some reason ignored by the authors of many Soviet cookbooks. Herring under a fur coat don't mention the compilers of “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” - neither in the first edition of 1939, nor in the subsequent ones of 1947 and 1952. By words culinary historian Pavel Syutkin, the recipe for this salad does not appear at all in such publications until the 1980s. There are other estimates of the “age” of the recipe - it could have appeared in 1960s or 1970s. Be that as it may, it is strange that a dish supposedly invented in 1918 and which became popular disappeared from view for many decades. It is also significant that neither Anastas Bogomilov nor Aristarkh Prokoptsev are mentioned in the sources, except in connection with the famous salad.
Apparently, the recipe familiar to the modern New Year's table appeared in the second half of the 20th century as a result of processing dishes invented earlier. As in Northern European, and in domestic Salads similar to herring under a fur coat, but with a vinaigrette vinegar dressing, were popular in the culinary world. It was probably replaced with mayonnaise over time.
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