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Fur coat with mayonnaise

Herring Under a Fur Coat (Shuba)

The famous salad straight out of the Soviet Union — how could you skip it? Herring under a fur coat ("shuba") is everybody's favorite, and it shows up on holiday tables again and again. The combination of salty, oily fish with sweet vegetables gives the dish its one-of-a-kind taste.

Maria

Recipe author

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Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Herring (4 fillets)

350

Potatoes

Eggs

Beets

Carrots

Mayonnaise

100

Ground black pepper

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 25 % 5 g

Fats 30 % 6 g

Carbohydrates 45 % 9 g

112 kcal

GI: 60 / 0 / 40

Cooking method

Step 1:

How do you make Herring Under a Fur Coat? Gather your ingredients. You'll need: lightly salted herring fillets, potatoes, carrots, eggs, beets, ground black pepper (optional — I left it out), and mayonnaise.
Step 2:

Cut the herring fillets into small cubes.
Step 3:

Boil the potatoes in their skins, then cool and peel them. Grate the potatoes on the coarse side of a grater.
Step 4:

Boil the carrots in their skins, then cool and peel them. Grate the carrots on the coarse side of a grater.
Step 5:

Boil the beets in their skins. I use already-cooked, peeled beets — that way there's no risk of getting a bad one. Cool and peel them, then grate the beets on the coarse side of a grater.
Step 6:

Hard-boil the eggs, then cool and peel them. Grate the eggs on the coarse side of a grater too.
Step 7:

In a deep salad bowl or on a flat platter, build the layers, spreading mayonnaise over every layer except the herring: potatoes – herring – carrots – eggs – beets.
Step 8:

Spread mayonnaise over the top beet layer. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight so the flavors meld.
Step 9:

Garnish the salad however you like before serving. I used dill sprigs, grated egg, and the leftover herring fillet. Enjoy!

Back in Soviet days, there wasn't much to work with for fancy dishes, so people relied on the beets, carrots, and potatoes everyone could get. Even now, with endless options, herring still remains the go-to salad for many. Its history reaches back to Scandinavia, long famous for an abundance of this tasty fish. A Norwegian cookbook from 1851 features a similar recipe called Sillsallad — herring salad — with herring laid on the bottom of a large plate and topped with boiled beets, thinly sliced carrots, and eggs, though the ingredients weren't mixed together. From the second half of the 19th century, Russian cookbooks trace their own version of the "herring under a fur coat" recipe — made, of course, without mayonnaise and closer to a vinaigrette, but with ingredients remarkably like today's. The dish as we know it now is said to be the creation of an innkeeper named Anastas Bogomilov, who in 1918 grew worried about the state of his establishments: after a few drinks, many patrons would get rowdy and brawl over politics. His cook, one Aristarkh Prokoptsev, was tasked with inventing a salad filling and hearty enough that people wouldn't get so drunk and fight. Prokoptsev took a creative approach, reading meaning into each ingredient: herring stood for the proletariat (the workers loved it and ordered it often); beets for the red revolutionary banner; the other root vegetables (onion, carrot, potato) for the soil and thus the peasantry; and mayonnaise — a French sauce — for a nod to the French revolutionaries.
It's better to make your own mayonnaise — it's tastier and better for you. See some great homemade mayonnaise recipes here. You can also dress the salad with sour cream or plain yogurt instead of mayo, on their own or blended with mayonnaise in any ratio you like, which lightens the dish.
How do you hard-boil eggs? To keep them from cracking, start them in cold water over low heat. Boil for 9 minutes after the water comes up, then plunge them into cold water to cool — the sudden temperature change makes them peel more easily.