Herring Under a Fur Coat: Classic Shuba Salad Layer by Layer

Step-by-step recipe

1. The amount of each ingredient in this salad is whatever your heart desires! But usually it's worth sticking to a simple rule: for one herring, one small onion, one large potato (or 2-3 small ones), a medium carrot, 3 eggs, one large sweet-tart apple, and one or two large beets. Better yet, make it two herrings…
   
2. Boil or bake the vegetables: potatoes, beets and carrot. I usually boil the carrot and bake the beets and potatoes.
3. Hard-boil the eggs, cool them under running water and peel.
4. Peel the apples.
5. Grate the vegetables, apples and eggs on the large holes of a grater into separate bowls, without mixing.
   
6. Peel and finely chop the onion. Many people use green onions, but I don't like that: the taste of green onion “spoils” the salad. It's best to use a sweet onion for salad, like a Yalta red or a white salad onion.
7. Clean the herring: remove the fins, skin and guts, and cut off the tail and head. Split it into two fillets. Next, as a friend of mine says, comes a simple but interesting job. A real quest! You have to remove absolutely every bone from the fillets: the rib bones, the backbone, the fine bones along the back and so on. The more thorough you are, the nicer it will be to eat. Finely chop the herring with a knife, or, even better, tear it into small pieces with your fingers. If you have nothing else to do, give it a go. It's much more interesting that way, but it takes a lot of time.
   
8. Joking aside, herring has always been the most “working-class” food. Always means always. Salted, lightly salted or smoked Atlantic herring, in barrels or tins, was one of the few products you could find in stores at any time some 40 years ago. Vegetables, unlike meat, were available too. Mayonnaise was sometimes hard to get, but then again, mayonnaise is easy to make.
9. For some reason, this salad has stuck in my memory since early childhood. It was rarely called by its full name; people usually just said shuba, “fur coat.” And out of sheer contrariness I called it “the overcoat,” and usually looked forward to the fur coat's “collar,” the leftovers, for breakfast the next day.
10. What I like about shuba is that you can make a lot of it and eat it for a long time. After a day in the fridge, the salad only gets better, soaked through with mayonnaise, juices and flavor.
11. You can make shuba in individual portions, in small bowls, or on a big platter. I've even seen a huge plastic tub of it. So it's all up to you.
12. There are a lot of arguments, sometimes until people are hoarse or it comes to blows. Which ingredients don't belong? Do you have to spread mayonnaise on every layer? What's the order of the layers?
13. You can spread mayonnaise on every layer. But it's simpler to put all the ingredients in a bowl, pour in a liter of mayonnaise and mix. Why a liter? Because 6-7 layers of salad will use up exactly 3-4 packs of mayonnaise. Or even more. That's about a liter. And your herring will “drown.” The aroma and the taste will definitely be all mayonnaise.
14. The trickiest question, and the most interesting one, is how to arrange the layers.
15. Going by the name of the salad, the herring comes first. People often write that potatoes go first. Sorry, but this is herring “under” a fur coat, not “in” one.
16. Herring is an excellent snack even on its own. And even better with onion! And a drop of oil. And with baked potatoes, or potatoes boiled in their skins! I'm being told I can stop writing now, the recipe has been accepted.
17. Herring, onion, potatoes. That's the order of the first layers of the salad.
    
18. The potato layer is usually the thickest in the salad, so it's worth spreading it with mayonnaise. Don't overdo it: lots of mayonnaise in a juicy salad isn't good.
    
19. Let's step away from shuba for a second and remember another equally traditional salad of ours: Olivier. Remember? Onion, potatoes, carrots, eggs… No need to reinvent anything, so the next layers go exactly in that order.
20. So: herring, onion, potatoes, carrot, eggs.
    
21. Olivier gets a pickled cucumber. But, excuse me, we're not going to eat herring with pickles! Still, the salad needs a bit of tang. A ripe sweet-tart apple complements the flavor beautifully. A lot of people leave the apple out of shuba and lose a lot. By the way, apples tend to “go brown” in the air, so peel and grate the apple right before you lay that layer.
    
22. The “lining” of the fur coat is actually ready! All that's left is to sew on the outside. The outside of the coat is always beets: dark and “shaggy,” like the fur on a good, expensive coat. Don't be stingy, make the top layer nice and thick.
23. And spread it with mayonnaise, again, without being stingy! Then wipe the edge of the plate with a napkin, since mayonnaise tends to run off the plate.
    
24. Now, briefly, the order: herring, onion, potatoes, mayonnaise, carrot, eggs, apple, beets, mayonnaise.
25. I don't know if shuba needs decorating. I'm not sure. But I think a little crumbled hard-boiled egg yolk on top would be fitting.
26. Here's my advice: let the salad chill in the fridge, ideally for a few hours. Better still, make it the evening before. The mayonnaise will soak up the beet juice and turn deep pink.
    
27. And have some very fresh bread ready to go with the salad. It's unbelievably good with fresh bread!