Based on this, borrowings, alterations and repetitions from other cuisines are not included in the national cuisine, even though they have taken root and taken root in one way or another among some peoples.
And from the dishes belonging to any national cuisine, you can include only those that can be called primordially national in origin, long-term use, prevalence, and according to the inclination to them of one or another people …
William Pokhlebkin
With the words Russian cuisine, our average person imagines potatoes with herring and onions, Russian cabbage soup, pancakes, buckwheat porridge, suckling pig and …. what else?
How did Russian cuisine develop? Did Russians invent Russian cuisine at all?
A modern Russian person has no idea what a real, old Russian cuisine is.
Let’s start from afar.
Initially, the basis of Russian cuisine was the Russian stove, from which most of the true Russian dishes came out. This Neanderthal unit was designed to heat food exclusively in a pot and later in cast iron.
True Russian cuisine practically did not know such a type of food processing as frying. Firstly, it was simply impossible to fry in the oven, and secondly, in Russia they didn’t come up with any more nasty pans.
The Russian stove, therefore, did not stimulate the development of rational technological methods of thermal processing of products at all, excluding in general any methods other than primitive cooking in a pot, which differs little from the Neanderthal method of heating water with red-hot stones.
The main place in the menu of a Russian person from the 9th to the 20th century was occupied by cereals, gruels and bread. Russian cuisine, like no other in the world, was distinguished by one property. Food was divided into peasant and lordly (master’s, boyar’s). on skewers, but always from the largest birds or animals. For this, the largest and fattest swans, geese, sturgeon, beluga, etc. were specially selected.
I will specially note that the “art” of cooking meat and fish on a spit came to Russia from the East, we ourselves did not guess before. Another difference from foreign cuisines was the splendor of the lordly cuisine. For example, it was usual to have 50 meals at dinner, and at the royal table their number grew to 150-200! Russian tsars, boyars and bosses have always loved to devour heartily at the expense of earthworms of Russian peasants.
Another thing is a Russian peasant or, for example, worse than that, a woman. They wandered around the Russian lordly land and picked mushrooms, berries, nettles, snoot (have you ever eaten snoot?), quinoa.
Vegetables known in Russia since the 10th century – cabbage, radish, peas, cucumbers – were prepared and eaten raw or boiled, but always separately! Have you tried the Russian national dish of boiled cucumbers? The fact was that in true Russian cuisine, food was never ground! And they were never mixed! Russian cuisine did not know any salads and vinaigrettes!
Interestingly, this stupid tradition in Russia lasted until the 18th century!
Pokhlebkin writes about this:
Have you ever tried whole mushrooms baked in pies? Try it very tasty, but it is very inconvenient to eat.
What such idiocy was connected with is not entirely clear, no one gives an explanation for this.
but I have an assumption that this “lack” of Russian cuisine stemmed simply from a lack of iron cutting tools, so to speak, and cutting with flint knives is known to be very inconvenient. But there is another explanation. Cutting was just … too lazy, why? And so it will come down to fill the belly.
In connection with this national peculiarity (lack of and inability to make knives, or our laziness), in Russian cuisine there were no such long-known dishes abroad at that time as: minced meat, rolls, pastes, cutlets, and … simple sausage.
The Russian people did not know cream and butter until the 15th-16th century. Natural Russian dishes were consumed with hemp, nut, poppy vegetable oils. Has anyone tried peas with hemp oil? Try it.
Sugar was recognized in Russia only in the 17th century. And only in the 18th century in Russia the first refinery was opened on imported sugar cane.
”So you imagine disgustingly whole and unsalted and tasteless boiled cucumbers seasoned with poppy oil, and for a snack an uncut onion.
At the same time, master-Russian cuisine perfectly used spices in the process of cooking according to foreign recipes. The bar and the boyars did not deny themselves anything.
The main national product and the main “cuisine” of the common Russian people was bread, black rye bread. White wheat bread was not baked at all in bakeries, but in special bakeries and slightly sweetened.
And just do not think that those real Russian cabbage soup have anything to do with modern (of course, properly cooked) transparent cabbage soup. Real Russian cabbage soup was large boiled pieces of cabbage or whole heads of cabbage in hot water with rye flour loose in it! And for taste, a little hemp oil (which was simultaneously burning in stupid lamps). The real “Russian cabbage soup” was invented by Antoine Kareem, but more on that later.
And by the way, do not think that real Russian rye pancakes made from sour rye dough are those pancakes that are now considered Russian. Have you tried true unleavened Russian pancakes with poppy seed oil? Be sure to try.
