[Sca-cooks] Re: More of the stroganoff question

[Stefan li Rous]

I've forwarded some of the comments on the stroganoff question to
Alex. Alex/Posadnik is the Russian I mentioned to you last week.
I have his permission to forward his comments to this list and
will probably forward more when I've finished reading the ones
he has sent and maybe more in the future.

I've also gotten an article he has written on Russian Soups and
will be adding it to the Florilegium as soon as I can. He has
promised me more material.

Stefan

> Subject: Re: More of the stroganoff question
> Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 09:57:25 +0300
> From: Alexey Kiyaikin <posadnik at mail.ru>
> To: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net>

<snip>
> And just about putting sour cream into dishes is rather old, though
> Stroganoff is really a modern invention. But the most common thing is
> mushrooms, stewed (actually, boiled) in sour cream. It is the really
> people's favourite (as every Russian lives at least in an hour from a
> forest, and has at least once gathered mushrooms), and often cooked as
> a camping dish after mushroom-hunt. Sour cream meets meat in the dish
> really seldom, but the reason for this is actually the seasonal
> character of milk and meat. The Russians got the habit to heat
> meat and sour cream together rather late. They simply couldn't
> afford it at least during the Viking Age. They couldn't spend the
> ever-ready & highly nutritional product as a raw ingredient.
> All the time before it served as a separate dish or was added
> to soups & stews - ready ones - as a source of easy-assimilated
> animal fat, especially
> when the recipe didn't require meat. The term "to whiten" is
> understandable everywhere in Russia, and means either adding milk
> to tea, or adding sour cream/sour milk/milk (for the poorest ones
> or scrooges)to soup to make it more nutritional.
>
> Alex.

--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****