SC - Russian dishes

[Traci_Bjers@radian.com]

Not to knock your wonderful essay and your thoughtful attempt to provide us
some Russian food history, but there is actually no evidence for zakuski
having a 9th century origin.  The first mention of "zakuski" isn't seen
until the 18th or 19th century (I'll need to look up the exact date).
There aren't any images of zakuski being served and there aren't any
archaeological finds to support an early origin that I know of.  The idea
that zakuski evolved from the "Viking" smorgasbord (is smorgasbord even
period?) is folklore and is perpetuated in many English _and_
Russian-language cookbooks (and yes, zakuski is still very popular today).

>From pp. 174 of _Bread and Salt_ by Smith:
"As a result of West European influences upper class meals were modified in
two main ways [in the 19th century].  First, the formal meal was no longer
started with bread and vodka as in the sixteenth and seventeenth century,
or cold soups as later, but with open sandwiches of meat, fish or
cheese...Such food sometimes constituted a meal.  This development was a
stage in the emergence of the Russia hors-d'oeurve, called zakuski, of
which the great range known today only arose in the nineteenth century."
(the second influence was that sugar began to replace honey, FYI)

And vodka (from potatoes anyway) isn't period either.  There may be some
evidence of it being made in the late "medieval" period from grain, but
text evidence shows that the most popular drinks in late-period Russia were
meads, beers and various types of kvas.  Sorry.  :(

>...Rurik became the first czar of Russia.

Er, there were no tsars in Russia until Ivan Grozny ("the Terrible", mid
1500's) and there wasn't really a Russia that early (9th cen) either, but
we won't get into that.  :)

>Preserved fish was another practice the Russians
>adopted from the Vikings.

We don't know this.  Scholars still continue to debate the amount of
influence the Vikings (Rus') had over the native Russians.  Unfortunately
there is extremely little evidence on medieval Russian foodways.
Yana (Ilyana Barsova)  jdmiller2 at students.wisc.edu
         http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~jdmiller2 
"Shchi da kasha, pischa nasha" 
       -- Cabbage soup and kasha are our native food
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