Among the many things that perfumery and cuisine have in common is their ability to take you back into the past. A whiff, a taste, and you’re in another time and place. My Proustian madeleine was a green salad my grandmother put together when we suddenly discovered that our lettuce patch was about to be overgrown. Since wasting food is a cardinal sin in our household, I was sent to pick the lettuce and herbs, while my grandmother boiled eggs and whipped a simple sour cream dressing. The combination of dill’s spicy licorice, tart cream and slightly bitter greens was refreshing, but it also reminded me of my childhood so poignantly that for a while I sat with my fork mid-motion.
Among my grandmother’s large repertoire, salads never played a big role. Depending on the season, we always had a large plate of fresh vegetables on the table–cucumbers sprinkled with salt, sliced tomatoes, radishes or spring onions, but the salad was hardly more than slivered cabbage tossed with parsley, dill and toasted sunflower seed oil. Green salad wasn’t even considered food fit for humans, and I vividly recall my great-grandmother pointing to a pile of lettuce and saying that only during the famine of the 1930s would she eat that “green nonsense.”
But for my grandmother greens meant vitamins, and even if her mother refused them, we, kids, had them for lunch almost daily. This being Ukraine–and this goes for most of Eastern Europe–leaves dressed simply with oil and vinegar wouldn’t do. My grandmother liked the subtle bitterness of romaine lettuce, but she added sour cream and boiled eggs to make salad “more interesting.” Even more delicious was her addition of scallions and lots of pungent dill. If cucumbers were on hand, they went into the salad too. Everything would be tossed till sour cream, eggs and herbs coated the leaves with velvety, pale yellow sauce.
Fast forward 20 years, and the green salad with egg and dill is still on our table. My grandmother still makes it the same way–lettuce, cucumbers, eggs, lots of scallions, dill and sour cream. I add my own touches, like thick, creamy yogurt instead of sour cream, basil instead of dill, and a generous splash of lemon juice. I often serve the salad alongside grilled fish, but my favorite way to eat it is piled onto thick slices of country bread for a rustic tartine.
Green Salad with Egg and Dill Dressing
Serves 4
1 head romaine lettuce, cored and cut crosswise into 1″ strips
2 medium cucumbers
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled
2 scallions
4 sprigs of dill
1/4 cup sour cream or Greek yogurt
salt, pepper, lemon juice to taste
If your cucumbers have tough skin, peel them and cut in half lengthwise and slice into thin semicircles. Chop scallions. Mince dill. Chop eggs into medium cubes.
Toss lettuce, cucumbers, scallions, and dill in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Add sour cream and toss well to combine. If you would like to accent the tart note, add lemon juice. Finally, add chopped eggs and once again mix thoroughly. Serve immediately. Enjoy!
Photography by Bois de Jasmin
74 Comments
G: This looks delicious, and I love your reference to Remembrance of Things Past. 🙂 June 19, 2014 at 7:37am
Victoria: Some tastes are just so evocative, and this salad packs them all in–dill, sour cream, bitter lettuce and cucumbers. One of my favorite comfort foods is mashed potatoes served with plain sliced cucumber. June 19, 2014 at 11:37am
Cornelia Blimber: Yes, salad with mashed potatoes was your idea, i remember! I cooked it often since i read it on your blog. June 19, 2014 at 5:10pm
Victoria: Isn’t it such a great pairing–creamy and crisp? June 19, 2014 at 5:13pm
Cornelia Blimber: Yes it is! June 20, 2014 at 4:40am
Michaela: The salad is delicious, quite common in Eastern Europe, probably, with some variations. No green nonsense at all 🙂
What I like most in this post is the first set of pictures, beautiful suggestion of travelling back in time with familiar scent or taste! June 19, 2014 at 8:27am
Victoria: Thank you! The top left photo is me and my cousin. We were able reconstruct the same scene 20 years later with the same items! Even the little cart is still functioning well and is being used in the garden today, as I write this.
You can add tomatoes, radishes or regular sweet onions instead of cucumbers. Or skip lettuce and just make it a cucumber-egg salad. At home though, we always had it the same way. My grandmother’s more inventive dishes focused on soups, meats, and especially, pastries. June 19, 2014 at 11:44am
Michaela: What a beautiful idea, to be nice kids again, 20 years later!
Sounds tempting, thank you! I’d rather pay a visit to your grandmother, though… at lunch time 🙂 June 20, 2014 at 4:01am
Victoria: It was fun, especially since it didn’t take much effort to unearth all of the props we spotted in the photo.
My grandmother usually cooks enough to feed a crowd, even if she’s making lunch for us three, so there is plenty to share. 🙂 June 20, 2014 at 7:32am
Michaela: And the little cart is impressive… so timeless. June 20, 2014 at 4:26am
Victoria: One thing Soviets could build well was the heavy, rustic stuff like this. 🙂 I also have a couple of Soviet era cast iron pots, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can chip them. One time, a Swedish cast iron pan fell on the smallest of the pots. The pan was dented, the pot remains unscathed. June 20, 2014 at 7:51am
Michaela: 🙂
I remember about 20 – 30 years ago it was a praise to say ‘it’s Russian’ about some stuff, it meant solid and long lasting. June 20, 2014 at 7:58am
Victoria: When my mom and I went to visit our aunt in Hungary in 1989, we were allowed to take such a small amount of money out of the country that the only way to make our trip feasible was to carry things we could sell in Budapest. Everyone said that Hungarians would want the irons, and I recall us carrying 5 Soviet irons with us. Poor Hungarians! My memory draws a blank on how these irons ended up being sold, because imagining my refined and soft spoken mom peddling anything in the market is difficult. I only remember that we returned without them. June 20, 2014 at 8:09am
Michaela: Half laughing, half crying reading your short story… I know what you mean. ‘Refined and soft spoken people’, exactly as you say, totally unprepared for this job, had to make much needed money by selling almost anything. On the other side, there were people who would hungrily buy anything in the market, and treasure their prey. I myself bought silver jewelry and hand cream from Poland tourists, cigarettes and coffee from the Serbians, for me and my mom, and I was so proud. June 20, 2014 at 9:54am
Victoria: In the early 1990s when things were really not good, everyone learned to be an entrepreneur, even my mom, but back then, it was a bit of shock. June 20, 2014 at 12:14pm
Sandra: I love anything with eggs! I have been eating a lot if salads with strawberries and really good balsamic vinager.
On a side note , it’s wedding week! Can’t believe it all starts next week June 19, 2014 at 8:37am
Cornelia Blimber: Congratulations! Did you already choose your perfume? June 19, 2014 at 9:29am
Michaela: Congratulations! 🙂 June 19, 2014 at 9:30am
Victoria: Congratulations, Sandra! Enjoy everything minute of it and if you have time, write down your impressions (and scents, why not!) It makes such a fun reading later on. 🙂 June 19, 2014 at 11:45am
Victoria: Sandra, I also wanted to mention that you’ve inspired our meal today. I made a salad of green lettuce dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, added fresh apricots, strawberries, and then draped the whole thing with prosciutto. Seems eccentric, but the pairing worked really well. So, thank you! June 19, 2014 at 5:15pm
SophieC: This sounds delicious – it might try it with coconut milk yoghurt. Your memories if side vegetables sound so elegant, crisp and refreshing.
My memory of something similar is, dare I admit it, simple lettuce sandwiches with Heinz salad cream as a child in the 1970s. While my tastes (and the rest of UK’s) are different now, there is still something wonderful about this. June 19, 2014 at 9:06am
Victoria: We grew (and still do) most of these vegetables ourselves, so they were picked and eaten the same day. It was one of the reasons why we never felt tempted to dress them up much, but then again, in the countryside the dishes are more on the rustic side. Which is how I like it. 🙂
I can relate! I have vivid memories of tasting bottled salad dressings for the first time when they were made available in the early 1990s, and I thought that they were heavenly. I even get an occasional craving for them. My husband claims that Heinz mayonnaise and dressing used to taste better back then, but I don’t know if it’s really true or if it’s a tendency to remember the past as much better than it really was. June 19, 2014 at 11:49am
Cornelia Blimber: That old picture gave me a bittersweet nostalgic feeling.
I will make the salad tomorrow, with mached potatoes and the cucumber aside with salt and vinegar. June 19, 2014 at 9:28am
Victoria: I love old photos. For my cousin and I, there is no bitterness at all, just sweet memories. After all, we are lucky to still have the place where both of us spent our childhood, and while our great-grandparents have passed away more than a decade ago, they left so much behind that we feel they’re near. My grandmother keeps it all together, but she doesn’t shy away from modernizing either. She’s far less sentimental than we are. 🙂
By the way, she loved Dutch herring I brought last time (and it was even not the lovely freshly salted matjes, but the packaged, regular kind). June 19, 2014 at 11:56am
Cornelia Blimber: Dutch herring is delicious indeed, and very healthy. If you are tired, herring will buck you up. I eat them with chopped onions, but purists don’t. June 19, 2014 at 12:23pm
Victoria: Which reminds me that I need to see if it’s already available in our stores. My husband is not a fan of herring at all, but he likes the Dutch variety. We also usually eat it with onions and a bit of lemon juice. June 19, 2014 at 5:09pm
Cornelia Blimber: I think that the Polish salad from Jillies comment would be great with Dutch herring. June 20, 2014 at 4:45am
Victoria: I think that it would be perfect! June 20, 2014 at 7:52am
ula: Only one thing for me to say – I love dill!!!
Seriously, I think Eastern Europe has never really rooted for green salads – as a child growing up in former Czechoslovakia, I remember the only “salad” we really had with almost anything was lettuce with a watery dressing made of water, salt, sugar and white vinegar. The tradition of French “vinaigrette” was lost on us. And then there was cucumber salad with lots of dill, some sour cream and garlic.
To me, cream & dill is very, dare I say, “Russian” or rather typical of all countries east of Czechoslovakia (Ukraine, Poland,…). Love it. June 19, 2014 at 9:46am
Victoria: I do too! There are two herbs I keep in my fridge all the time, dill and parsley, and I feel that I can dress up anything with them. I also find the taste of dill so familiar, and especially the combination of dill and sour cream. I always thought that dill was an exclusively Eastern European herbs, but a big surprise for me was to discover how much this combo (but with yogurt, not sour cream) was popular in certain places like Iran or Northern India. Palestinian cuisine is also rich in dill. I find the taste addictive and refreshing. Ok, now I’m hungry, so I need to go fix a plate of salad with tomato, dill and yogurt. June 19, 2014 at 12:00pm
Marsha: I have to confess to being a MEAT person and since I am now on disability, I very seldom have the opportunity to eat meat. So I am now scouring new recipes to find different ways to fix a salad.
I had to give a little of my past history to explain why I had to, despite reading in depth about the 1930’s famine in Ukraine, LOL at your great-grandmother’s comment about salad! I love a steak! If I get one now, my brother has to treat me. And if we go to a *steak place,* he usually orders a salad which totally confuses me. Why go to a nice restaurant if you’re going to order a salad? As you have so eloquently shown here, you can make a much nicer one at home! June 19, 2014 at 9:53am
Victoria: My grandmother also is a meat person. She cooked Lenten foods for me when I asked (essentially, vegan dishes as dairy and animal products aren’t allowed during Lent), but not only did she sneak in butter and bits of pork in these “vegan dishes,” she looked at me with utmost pity when I was eating them. There are many vegetable dishes she cooks really well, but eating only vegetarian food for days, not to say weeks, is a foreign concept to her. 🙂 June 19, 2014 at 12:25pm
Michaela: As a East European Romanian, salads are for us a national symbol. Green salad like this one is the main Romanian choice for winter as a side dish to meat grill. It is indeed lovely and I associate the green salad with snow and the time of the year when no other vegetables are fresh. Then it’s the national salad dish we call the ‘food of the peasant or food of the poor”: tomatoes, onion and cheese ( similar to feta cheese), which is to me, and to many other romanians alike the symbol of summer. In summer, if I have the tasty romanian tomatoes, a juicy onion and some country made romanian cheese I don’t need meat at all and I can have it for days and days in a row, without getting bored. In fact, I divide the year in tomato-salad and no-tomato salad months. Gosh, how I love them! Simple, unsophisticated but so tasty, so real and true to the concept of natural food. June 19, 2014 at 10:32am
Victoria: If I had to pick one fruit and vegetable to eat for the rest of my life, it would be tomato, but a proper, vine-ripened one with lots of flavor. Nothing else compares. Like you, I divide the year into the times when tomatoes are good and the times when they are not. June 19, 2014 at 12:28pm
Nancy A.: What a little feathery herb can do to enhance memory and savory! This was a commonplace herb used in my childhood household as well — it was de rigeur in the chicken soup, salads as you describe, on salmon..you name it. Of late, I incorporate Persian cucumbers (kinda trendy, lately) or what my recent return to kirbys (when I can find them in the market) because of their crispiness, small seeds, if any and what was used for pickling. All good stuff and yes, all very old world Eastern European. As an aside, you’ve prompted my reading Gogol again. It’s all good stuff. June 19, 2014 at 11:30am
Victoria: What are you reading, Nancy? (I love nothing more than to talk of books and especially Gogol!)
Dill matches so well with the crisp, refreshing taste of cucumber. If you like kohlrabi, it’s another good pairing. Juliene kohlrabi and toss it with the same sour cream-dill-scallion dressing (the egg is optional) as what I’ve used for the recipe here. June 19, 2014 at 12:30pm
Lucas: Sounds like a simple and refreshing dish 🙂
Bon appetit! June 19, 2014 at 11:42am
Cornelia Blimber: Are there typical Polish salads? June 19, 2014 at 11:50am
Victoria: Thank you! You’re right, it’s simple and easy to put together. We almost always have something out of these ingredients on hand. Tarragon also works well instead of dill and gives the dressing more of a “French flavor.” June 19, 2014 at 12:31pm
Wendy Edelson: sour cream and dill….reminds me of my Bubbies from Belarus….thank you!
I’m going to raid my garden for fresh new baby lettuces and make this salad tonight! June 19, 2014 at 11:45am
Victoria: I hope that you will like it, and since you have home-grown vegetables, it’s bound to be a success. 🙂
I traveled to Belarus a few times with my family, and while I was little then, one of my strongest memories is the freshly churned, thick sour cream. Heaven! June 19, 2014 at 12:35pm
solanace: Dill is such an exotic herb to me, I barely remember how it smells! I´ve tried to grow it sometimes, but it does not stand the sun. This salad must be delicious, I love creamy dressings.
BTW, the other day you were talking about Nigella´s books, but I think I didn´t get to post the comment I was writing. Feast is very nice, she (very wisely) embraces celebrations from several religions and countries, and the recipes, organized in menus for different occasions, are great. June 19, 2014 at 2:18pm
Victoria: These days I’m so used to the oil-vinegar dressings that the creamy ones are a welcome change. Belgian sour cream is 36% fat, which makes the decadent sauce. Almost too decadent and rich for my tastes, so unless I go to the Polish store, where I can buy the 12% fat sour cream, I stick to yogurt. And yogurt + dill + salt + pepper by itself is a terrific side dish. My husband has it for breakfast instead of the sweet variety. June 19, 2014 at 2:50pm
solanace: I have a feeeling my son will fall head over heels for your husband´s savory yogurtt! June 20, 2014 at 5:55am
Victoria: My husband doesn’t care for sweets at all, and if it wasn’t for me, he would never eat them. So, the savory breakfast is his favorite kind. June 20, 2014 at 7:52am
Victoria: P.S. Feast is the only book I haven’t even leafed through, but I just checked online and it looks really good. Do you have any favorite recipes? June 19, 2014 at 2:51pm
solanace: Overall, it´s a nice book to leaf through. The Christmas chapter is incredible, all of it, and so are those dedicated to the big Jewish hollidays. (See, another woman ´serious´ men could take a hint from…) There is also the chicken marinated in lavender and rosé wine from the meet the in-laws chapter. An entire chapter dedicated to chocolate cakes, a Georgian feast (the country, not the US state) she tried to recreate…
Do you know Patricia Wells? June 20, 2014 at 6:04am
solanace: I also wanted to comment on the support you guys offered her, many people saying that they bought her books when she was facing personal problems. How cool, it didn´t cross my mind to do that! June 20, 2014 at 6:06am
Victoria: I also found that touching! June 20, 2014 at 7:54am
Victoria: Thank you! It sounds intriguing.
I have a couple of Patricia Wells’s books, and one of my favorites is her French Bistro Cookbook. She has an insanely decadent chocolate cake in it that requires baking and then gentle steaming. June 20, 2014 at 7:53am
Ann: I love your recipes. They’re like little stories and you can connect them to scents and your memories. It makes me want to read more about family and childhood. June 19, 2014 at 3:24pm
Victoria: Thank you very much, Ann! Some dishes I remember from childhood have such nice memories associated with them, even if the dishes themselves are very simple, like this salad. June 19, 2014 at 5:04pm
solanace: Agree! I´d love to buy Victoria´s cookbook. June 20, 2014 at 6:09am
Eva S: And here I thought using dill was typically swedish 🙂 My parents grow it in their garden and we use it in a lot of traditional dishes, like gravlax (cured salmon). June 19, 2014 at 5:09pm
Victoria: One other reason why Swedish cuisine is one of my favorites. It tastes a bit familiar thanks to dill, but the other flavors and ingredients are different enough. In fact, I was just reading an article on Swedish food in Saveur, an American cooking magazine.
In Belgium, on the other hand, dill is not the common herb. It’s sold in small plastic packages (overpriced, to boot). I almost considered growing it. June 19, 2014 at 5:12pm
Ruta: Victoria, we have pretty much same style in Lithuania 🙂 love your post. Simply, delicious, hearty- that’s what food should be. The best part about it that people around still grow all of necessary ingredients themselves June 20, 2014 at 3:03am
Victoria: My great-grandmother, grandmother and mom were always working, so they didn’t have that much time to cook overly complicated things, and most of their dishes are like this. But it’s interesting to see the differences. My great-grandmother cooked more of the regional Ukrainian foods, while my grandmother who learned cooking mostly from cookbooks and friends has everything from Ukrainian to Georgian dishes in her repertoire. My mom was ahead of her time in liking light, vegetable rich dishes (and fresh fruit for dessert, not pastries), and her menu is different still. She makes the same salad as this one, but she doesn’t add sour cream, just lemon juice and olive oil. June 20, 2014 at 7:31am
Ruta: back then there was limited availability of products, hence usage of what was available. I just love, however, the way simple dishes are cooked in that region- so hearty and full of warmth. And yes, though greenery is just vitamins, back here we still eat them as necessity 🙂 June 20, 2014 at 9:20am
Victoria: Yes, you really made do with very little. My grandmother’s way with beets or cabbage would surprise those who are used to thinking about these vegetables as dull, stodgy fare.
But thanks to my grandmother’s interesting way with greens, I’ve learned to love the taste. Spinach is one of my favorite vegetables, and I love its metallic, grassy taste. And anything bitter is up my alley too!
By the way, I have a Lithuanian baking book. I wanted to recreate a cake my friend in Vilnus made, so I bought it and even found the recipe. The fact that it’s in Lithuanian complicates the matters somewhat, but I decided that with a dictionary and an understanding of the baking basics, this could be a doable project. 🙂 June 20, 2014 at 10:02am
Ruta: Victoria, should you need any help, let me know 🙂 June 22, 2014 at 7:29am
Jillie: Beautiful pictures and such a mouthwatering post.
I think I am obsessed with cucumbers at the moment, especially as it is now their season and they are so fragrant What could be more English than cucumber sandwiches? Together with a perfect pot of tea.
My Polish friend makes a delicious cucumber dish, soaking the slices in white balsamic vinegar, a little salt and some sugar, then drains them and stirs in sour cream and dill. So refreshing. June 20, 2014 at 4:01am
Victoria: I think that we need to have some cucumber sandwiches with tea. It’s true, what could be more English than that! Your friend’s salad sounds wonderful, and I imagine that the cucumber slices retain their crunch even more after a vinegar bath.
Thank you, Jillie! June 20, 2014 at 7:49am
Annette Reynolds: Oh dill… Sigh. I love it. For the first time ever I’m growing it, and have 4 huge happy plants to deal with. This recipe comes at a perfect time.
Coming from a Russian AND Greek background I got the best of both worlds, recipe-wise.
I make a “Greek” salad that my mother always called “Marouli.” It’s finely cut Romaine, lots of green onions, olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and dill all tossed together.
The dill I’ve always used has been dried (which is what I plan to do with the copious amounts of dill I’m growing). For whatever reason, dried dill always seems much more fragrant to me. I can really taste it in the food. (Just fresh cooked peas, butter, salt, pepper, and dill is one of my favorite ways to eat peas.)
And dill and eggs always went into the ground meat in the Piroshki my grandmother (and mother) made…
And I loved the photograph within the photograph, Victoria. Wonderful. June 20, 2014 at 12:12pm
Victoria: This salad you’ve described sounds like something I could eat daily, and I probably do, with small variations. And of course, dill is an integral herb in Greek cuisine.
We usually have dill fresh, but when I was growing up in Ukraine, it was a summer herb, so during the season, my mom mixed it with salt and froze it. It still tasted good, but grassy and less spicy. I haven’t tried dill that way for many years, but I still remember the taste and smell perfectly.
I need to ask my grandmother to make pirozhki, little pies. My favorites are filled with cherries or plums. June 20, 2014 at 1:48pm
Annette Reynolds: For whatever reason, I never realized Piroshki could be filled with anything at all… To us it was always a savory food. Filling the dough with a fruit sounds wonderful.
Tell me, does your family bake it or deep fry it? (We fry it, and OH MY GOD, do I ever love it.) June 20, 2014 at 2:33pm
Victoria: You can fill them with anything you like! At home, we usually had fruit filled pirozhki or savory ones filled with tomato stewed cabbage. My grandmother makes vatrushki from the same dough, the Russian open-faced tartlets filled with sweet cheese and raisins.
We usually bake them, but my grandmother’s dough is so rich that frying them would be an overkill even for her.
What kind of dough do you use for pirozhki? June 20, 2014 at 2:53pm
Annette Reynolds: Wow, that’s really fascinating! Now, Vatrushki I definitely remember my grandmother making and your using that word in a sentence brought the delicious taste right back to me.
I’m not a baker (although I love to cook), so asking me about dough is going to be a study in frustration. The best I can do is to say it’s a yeast dough, and the Piroshki have to rise before being fried.
When I make it (which is very rarely), I tend to go the easy route and buy a boxed yeast dough mix we have here in the U.S. It’s perfect for Piroshki; they always come out perfectly. I’d even have to say that I think my grandmother would’ve been happy with the results, although she always made her own dough. (My mother, on the other hand, was the one who “discovered” using the Pillsbury rising dough mix, and the rest of the family was thrilled.)
All this talk of Piroshki and Vatrushki makes me want it RIGHT NOW! To show you how susceptible I am to suggestions, I’m boiling eggs as we speak, and plan on making your salad tonight!! So, thank you, thank you, Victoria… June 20, 2014 at 7:18pm
Victoria: I hope that you liked it! After reading this thread, I went off to buy Dutch herrings and made Jillie’s cucumber salad to go with them. Lots of nice inspiration through this thread!
I also asked my grandmother to add vatrushki to our menu. And of course, pirozhki with cherries. Ours are almost ripe enough. June 21, 2014 at 1:19am
Annette Reynolds: Victoria, we LOVED the salad. Followed your recipe, using low-fat sour cream. It was delicious and the perfect use of all that fresh dill I have growing in the garden. Had it with a nice piece of crusty bread.
Food and perfume: two of my favorite things! June 21, 2014 at 1:29am
Victoria: I’m so happy to hear it! I might make it tonight too. I’m now having a craving for it again. 🙂 June 21, 2014 at 1:51am
Ashley Anstaett: Thank you so much for sharing this recipe, Victoria. I made it for dinner tonight with some crusty bread and roasted carrots and it was so delicious! June 24, 2014 at 7:51pm
Victoria: Your dinner sounds delicious! I’m glad that the salad was a success. It easy to make, but it’s filling enough to be its own course. June 25, 2014 at 10:27am
Karen: Thank you! I made this tonight and it was delicious. I’d forgotten how perfectly dill and egg go together. Excellent light summer meal! June 25, 2014 at 11:03pm
Victoria: They really do, don’t they! Dill’s light anise flavor goes well with many vegetables, fish and white meat. June 26, 2014 at 1:08pm