SC - Russian recipes (lack of)

[Bethany Public Library]

Medieval Russian Recipe Sources?
Been there, was terribly disappointed. Managed to pull off a Russian feast
anyway, though it wasn't provably period---it is possible, given the
relatively unchanging nature of Russian society for millennia, to make some
highly plausible guesses about ancient Russian cuisine, but they can't be
completely proved----yet. A Russian who attended my event thought I must
have been Russian to pull it off. Thus, I was as satisfied as it was
possible to be, given the lack of information available. This was quite some
time ago, before I was a grown-up cook, understand, but I might have the
menu backed up somewhere: try e-mailing me at home (liontamr at ptd.net) and
I'll see if I can find it. if I do find it, it's too long to post here, and
not quite scholarly enough.

*Elena Molokhovet's Gift to Young Housewives* is the closest historical
cookbook i could find to our period of study, apart from *The Domostroi* and
*Bread and Salt*. I also leaned
heavily on recipes collections from neighboring countries. Molokhovet is the
only Old Russian recipe book I could find (in English or not), the other two
are household management books and cultural food (and other stuff) books.
All are useful in putting together the puzzle of what may or may not have
existed in medieval and Renaissance Russian Cuisine (WAS there a Renaissance
in Russia?). Molokhovet dates to about 30 years prior to the fall of Czars.
She included a recipe for corn on the cob, for instance, but clearly has no
clue how to use it (in an otherwise culinarily sound and brilliant book).
She instructs us to slice the cob! A Few of the recipes are clearly French
or English, but most are ethnically sound and obviously based upon old
practices, which are far different from WASP cooking in some cases and thus
fascinating to me.

There may have been extant recipe collections from the time period you want,
but they were most likely destroyed by the Communist regime. The body of
food information in Russia had an ecclesiastical theme (whether because the
only books recorded church feasts, or because the few literate folk were
church men, i don't know), and was
thus targeted for destroyal. There area  few clues about pre-church Russia,
mostly evolving around porridge as sacrifices to the gods (See The
Domostroi). Russians were so
starved for cultural food information in the latter part of the last century
that badly Xeroxed copies of Molokhovet (which had to be hidden from the
regime, and miraculously survived) were suddenly appearing for sale on
street corners in Moscow once communism was ousted. This from the book's
forward.

Russia was a very non-literate society, and to a certain extent remained so
until our present time. It retained a lot of it's medieval origins and
practices even up to the fall of the Czars, which is why it fell so easily
(relatively speaking). The world had really passed them by, and the world
was looking a lot easier to live in that mostly-still-medieval Russia. Thus
it is easy to make some good guesses about what
you SHOULD use for recipes. Molokhovet  gives English and French sounding
names to her imported recipes, for instance. Bread and Salt contains a great
deal of valuable information about Russian cooking apparatus, the clay
household ovens in particular being what I myself studied. Fascinating
stuff, and almost certainly highly medieval. No chimneys at all. Built on a
platform.  Beds were built above and around them for warmth. The smoke hole
at the top was often used as we would use a burner on a stove today.

Anyone having information on new sources, PLEASE post to the list. We would
all benefit.

Cheers

Aoife, who is a wee bit Moravian from her Great Grandmother Kupp.

ekoogler at chesapeake.net writes:

> My Lady,
>  Do you, by any chance, have a source for period Russian recipes?  We are
> looking
>  to do a Russian event in November, and the cook would love to get his
hands
> on
>  some.  Please understand that none of us read Russian.
>

If anyone has period Russian recipes written in Russian, my brother's Lady
happens to be able to read and speak Russian, and has been studying Russian
history for some time.  I could pass them along and see if she can translate
them.

Balthazar of Blackmoor

Mr. Wizard, what happens when you combine pasta and antipasta?