Cucina russa e lessico italiano. Il caso di 'Insalata russa'

In the present article the author deals with the culinary metaphor ‘insalata russa’ (‘Russian salad’) in Italian language and culture. The author starts with a short review of the dish that is called in Italian ‘insalata russa’, and that roughly corresponds to the Russian salad ‘Olivier’. As to the uses of the culinary metaphor ‘insalata russa’, analyzed by the author, they point to the fact that in Italian it is used with the meaning of ‘mix of heterogeneous and varied elements’. The use occurrences of the locution ‘insalata russa’ comprise the titles of three anthologies of tales (published respectively in 1925, 1934 and 1996), the Italian title of the Russian film Okno v Pariž (Window to Paris), 1994, and the results of the query ‘insalata russa’ in the corpora of Italian language COris/ COdis. Finally, the author compares these results with those provided by the search of the same locution in Russian (‘русский салат’). This last search reveals that in Russian the locution ‘Russian salad’ is used exclusively in its literal sense.