For the third year in a row, the final episode of the ETV+ program "Horisont" before the end of the year features an overview of the cost of a New Year's Eve feast. In this broadcast, what's called the "Olivier Index" is calculated. In plain terms, that means figuring out how much it costs to make a bowl of Olivier salad.

The salad was reportedly invented in the late 19th century by a Belgian chef named Lucien Olivier who worked in Moscow. Among its original ingredients were crayfish tails, cooked partridge and quail and boiled veal tongue. Then came potatoes and other vegetables, all mixed together with homemade mayonnaise made from Provençal olive oil, French white wine vinegar and mustard. Other reported ingredients include caviar, lettuce, pickles, capers, hard-boiled eggs and soybeans.

During the Soviet era, Olivier salad morphed into a poor man's potato salad — the richer, the more it was drenched in mayonnaise.

As for the Olivier Index, ETV+ reports that it has risen by 20 percent this year, meaning the salad is a fifth more expensive to prepare. According to the channel, other staples of the New Year's Eve table include herring under a fur coat, tangerines, Napoleon cake, red caviar and jellied meat (sült).

I wouldn't have known anything about the Olivier Index myself (I don't own a television and haven't watched TV in over ten years) if my Russian-speaking friends hadn't started mocking it on social media.

The thing is, this kind of festive spread is a classic Soviet New Year's table — only the canned sprats are missing, and then you'd have the full set. In fact, ETV+'s holiday table is basically a checklist of what was scarce during the Soviet Union: tangerines, sprats, bologna, red caviar and — last but not least — mayonnaise. And that mayonnaise was poured generously over both Olivier salad and herring under a fur coat, serving as a kind of status symbol.

The few times I've spent New Year's Eve in Russia — specifically in Yakutia, in the Far East — I've sat at tables just like that. The only local additions were reindeer meat and the French and Italian cheeses I had brought along. This was during the time when Russia had banned food imports from "hostile" countries and everyone was chasing after Western cheese like it was a sacred relic.

There are two particularly interesting things about the Soviet New Year's Eve table. First, Estonians never really adopted it. Second, the tradition did take hold from Bishkek to Yakutsk and from Vladivostok to Chișinău.

I've discussed the first point a few times with colleagues from Russia. Sure, the situation with shortages in Soviet-era Estonia was different than in other parts of the "happiest country on earth." Just to be sure, I checked with my mother — sprats weren't considered a delicacy in Soviet Estonia, but mayonnaise certainly was in short supply. Another factor is that Estonians mostly celebrated Christmas and so all those jellied meats and tangerines had already appeared on the table earlier in December.

The second point — the spread and persistence of Soviet cuisine across the entire former Soviet Union — is actually easy to explain.

First, it was Russians who introduced many peoples — be they Tuvans, Kyrgyz, Tatars or Bashkirs — to the idea of celebrating the old year's end.

Second, during the Soviet era there was a large vocational school in Moscow, along with an affiliated institute, which trained canteen cooks from across the USSR and developed new recipes. As a result, even today it's possible to "enjoy" the culinary gems of Soviet mass catering — obshchepit in Russian — in cafeterias and restaurants throughout the post-Soviet space. Whatever one may think of solyanka soup, dishes like "meat in the French style," rice porridge with tomato-sauced meat chunks labeled plov and the Kurzeme Stroganoff (unheard of in actual Latvian cuisine) are the brainchildren of industrious Soviet recipe developers — and they're still being served from Narva to Tashkent.

And they'll likely be around for a long time. Food culture, especially around festive meals, tends to evolve slowly. It's one of the most conservative aspects of human culture.

This reminds me of a story. I once had a colleague in London with Armenian roots. In every way, he was British through and through, but he told me that in their family, his mother always prepared a certain Armenian dish on special holidays. No one remembered the name anymore, but the recipe had been passed down for generations. Out of professional curiosity, I asked what it was and he said it was a rice dish made in a large pot, with meat, carrots and raisins. I told him the name of the dish is pilaf.

There's no doubt that Soviet cuisine will live on. I wouldn't be surprised if even my grandchildren one day find themselves in a cafeteria in Dushanbe, served solyanka, meat patties with buckwheat and boiled sausage with sauerkraut. Traditions are a force to be reckoned with! Still, it would be fascinating to see Lucien Olivier's face if someone served him a plate of today's version of his namesake salad.

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