Salade niçoise

What a salade niçoise is

Salade niçoise (la salada nissarda in Niçois) is a composed salad of raw vegetables built around ripe tomatoes, with tuna and anchovies, hard-boiled eggs, small black Nice olives, basil and olive oil. The Cuisine Nissarde label, awarded in Nice to restaurants serving genuine local dishes, publishes the reference recipe, validated by its technical committee. Nice cook Yann Lefebvre calls the original a tomato salad passed on by word of mouth, which is why few cookbooks describe it. It is also seasonal: in 2017 France 3 noted that at some times of year there is no salade niçoise in Nice, because the tomatoes do not grow. Our guide to Niçoise cooking puts it among the other everyday dishes of the city.

How cooks make it

The base is the same everywhere in Nice: raw vegetables, fish, egg, olives. The differences are in the list.

Version	Vegetables	Fish and egg	Dressing
Cuisine Nissarde label	Mesclun, tomatoes, cébettes, celery hearts, green pepper, radishes; artichokes and broad beans in season	Tuna and salted anchovies, eggs	Olive oil at the last moment; part can be red wine vinegar
Yann Lefebvre, Nice (2024)	A large tomato (200 to 300 g), cébettes, green pepper; radish, broad beans, artichoke in season	Anchovy, tuna or both; 1 or 2 eggs	Olive oil, garlic, 1 tsp balsamic
Julia Sedefdjian, chef of Niçois origin	Mesclun, radishes, celery, tomatoes	Cooked tuna, anchovies, eggs	Lemon juice and olive oil, generously
Philippe Etchebest, not a Niçois chef (2023)	Tomatoes, broad beans, artichokes, radishes, spring onions, green pepper	Anchovies and eggs, no tuna	Olive oil
French Cooking Academy, international version	Boiled green beans, tomatoes, pepper, celery or cucumber, salad leaves	Tuna, anchovies, eggs	Vinaigrette

Tuna or anchovies. The label uses both. Lefebvre says that in the 19th century tuna was expensive while anchovies were cheap, which makes anchovy the older fish; he accepts either or both. Etchebest, who says he is revisiting the salad, keeps only anchovies.

Potatoes and green beans

The label, Sedefdjian and Lefebvre all make the salad with raw vegetables only; according to Sedefdjian, potatoes, green beans and rice have no place in it. Jacques Médecin, the former mayor of Nice, is reported to have told readers of his cookbook never to put boiled potato or any other boiled vegetable in it. The cooked version is old too: according to Wikipedia’s citations, French cookbooks of 1936 and 1938 and Julia Child’s 1961 book include potatoes or green beans. The French Cooking Academy’s page uses green beans and a vinaigrette. It adds that for purists the dressing is only salt, pepper and oil.

Two salads share a name. In Nice, “salade niçoise” means the raw one.

The dressing

The label recipe has no vinaigrette. It salts the tomatoes and vegetables as they are laid down, then pours the olive oil over everything at the last moment, then pepper. Its one variant replaces some of the oil with red wine vinegar. Sedefdjian dresses with lemon juice and oil. Lefebvre adds a teaspoon of balsamic, which he prefers with tomatoes, and says wine vinegar is the more traditional choice. Use a good olive oil: with so few ingredients, it is the dressing.

Olives and serving

The olive of the salade niçoise is the Cailletier, according to the specification of the Olive de Nice AOP. The AOP covers the olives and a plain olive paste made only from them. Serve the salad flat in a wide dish and divide it at the table so every plate gets some of each ingredient, as the label says. The same raw vegetables, tuna and anchovy, pressed into a round roll, make pan bagnat.