Niçoise Salad
Every component dressed separately before it goes in the bowl. Tossed all together, the potatoes take all the dressing and the leaves get none.
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Eggs
- Fish
- Mustard
- Sulphites
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Components
Dressing
Method
Dressing
Whisk all the dressing ingredients together in a jar and set aside.
Components
Boil the potatoes from cold salted water for 15 to 18 minutes, until a knife slides in easily.
Drain them and, while they are hot, spoon over 2 tablespoons of the dressing and turn them through.
Cook the beans in boiling salted water for 4 minutes, then plunge them into iced water and drain well.
The iced water stops them cooking and fixes the colour. Beans left to cool in their own heat go olive-drab and floppy.
Lower the eggs into boiling water and cook for exactly 8 minutes, then cool them in iced water and peel.
Eight minutes gives a yolk that is set at the edge and still bright and slightly fudgy in the centre. Ten minutes gives the grey ring and the chalky texture that makes people say they do not like boiled eggs.
Salt the tomato wedges and leave them for 10 minutes, then drain off the liquid.
Toss the lettuce leaves in a little dressing in a separate bowl.
Arrange everything in a wide shallow bowl in separate groups rather than mixing: leaves first, then potatoes, beans, tomatoes, tuna, halved eggs, olives and onion.
Dressing each component before it goes in is the whole method. Tossed together at the end, the potatoes and the leaves compete for the same dressing and the potatoes win every time.
Lay the anchovies over the top, spoon on the last of the dressing and grind on black pepper.
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What to expect
- Taste
Salt from the anchovy and olive, richness from the egg yolk and oily tuna, sharpness from the dressing, sweetness from the tomato. It is a salad of strong assertive things and no delicate ones.
- Aroma
Anchovy and olive oil.
- Texture
Everything different: waxy potato, squeaky bean, fudgy yolk, soft tuna, crisp leaf.
- Sound
None.
- How the flavour moves
Salt first, always, then the fat of the yolk and the tuna, then acid clearing it.
- Serve it
Room temperature, with the potatoes possibly still slightly warm, which is good.
- Goes with
Bread and butter, and a cold rosé. Nothing else is needed.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Beginner, with several things happening at once.
- Cost
Mid, and it depends entirely on the tuna.
- Equipment
Two pans, a bowl of iced water, and a wide shallow serving bowl.
- When to make it
Summer, lunch, for people.
- Best season
A summer salad, and it depends on tomatoes being worth eating.
- You know it is done when
Beans bright green rather than olive. Yolks deep yellow-orange with no grey. Potatoes holding their shape.
- And it feels like
Beans with a squeak, potatoes soft but intact, egg yolks just fudgy.
- Food safety
Anchovies and tinned tuna are both preserved and need no cooking. The eggs are cooked through. Nothing here is risky; the usual care applies to keeping it cold if it stands.
- Where it goes wrong
- Tossing it, which is the main failure and defeats the entire structure.
- Ten-minute eggs, giving a grey ring and a chalky yolk.
- Beans left to cool in their own heat, which go drab and limp.
- Cheap tuna in brine, which is dry and shreds.
- Undrained tomato, which waters the dressing.
- Dressing everything at once, so the potatoes soak it all up.
- If it does go wrong
Grey ring on the yolks: they went past eight minutes, or were not cooled in iced water. Drab beans: same problem. Bland: the potatoes needed dressing while hot, and the whole thing needs more salt. Watery: the tomatoes.
- Making it ahead
Cook and dress the components up to four hours ahead and assemble at the last minute.
- Keeping it
Poorly. The components keep separately for a day; assembled and dressed it does not.
- Reheating
No.
- Freezing
No.
- Leftovers
The components separately, in a lunchbox.
- Scaling it
Linear.
- Substitutions
Fresh seared tuna is common in restaurants and is not traditional; it also costs a great deal more and is a species question rather than a cooking one. Good tinned is the better choice on every count.
- Dietary swaps
Contains fish from both the tuna and the anchovies, eggs, and mustard and sulphites from the dressing. Pescatarian. Naturally gluten free, dairy free and nut free.
- Shopping for it
Tuna in olive oil, and check the species and fishing method on the tin.
- Keeping the cost down
The tuna is the cost. A good tin rather than a jar is the sensible compromise; brine-packed value tuna is a false economy in a dish where you can see and taste it.
- Sustainability
As with any tuna dish, the species and method matter more than the brand. Skipjack is the most abundant and most stocks are in reasonable condition; yellowfin and especially bigeye are under considerably more pressure, and fresh tuna steaks — which restaurant versions of this salad increasingly use — are usually the more heavily pressured species. Pole-and-line and FAD-free purse-seining take far less bycatch than FAD-associated fishing. Both facts are normally on the tin. Anchovies, by contrast, are a small forage fish with a comparatively light footprint, and eight of them do a great deal of work here.
- Nutrition
Genuinely balanced — protein, vegetables, some starch, and mostly olive oil for fat.
- Worth it?
Dress each thing before it goes in the bowl. It sounds fussy and it takes two extra minutes.
Where it comes from
- Origin
Nice, on the French Mediterranean coast.
- Also called
Salade niçoise.
- Said out loud
sa-LAD nee-SWAHZ.
- What the name means
Of Nice.
- History
Nice was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia until 1860 and its cooking is as Ligurian as it is French, which shows in the olive oil, the anchovies and the raw vegetables. The salad is a local dish of raw summer produce with preserved fish, and its transformation into a composed plate with potatoes, beans and eggs happened largely outside Nice, in French brasseries and then internationally.
- Why it matters
A serious matter in Nice, where the composition is defended, and a menu staple everywhere else in a form the defenders reject.
- When it is eaten
Summer lunch, and one of the better things to serve people outdoors.
- The traditional way
None beyond good arrangement, which is itself a technique — a composed salad is defined by its components staying separate.
- How it changed
Potatoes, green beans and a vinaigrette arrived from outside; in Nice the dressing is often just good olive oil.
- Regional variations
The purist Niçois version has no cooked vegetables at all. Restaurant versions increasingly use seared fresh tuna, which is a modern and expensive departure.
- How this version differs
It is the composed version with potatoes and beans, and it says so rather than claiming to be the Niçois one. The separate dressing of each component is the technique that makes a composed salad work and is usually left unsaid.
- Sources and credit
None to an individual. Jacques Médecin's 1972 book is the standard statement of the purist position, not the origin of the dish.
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