Sausage from the Soviet period. She can rightfully be called legendary. True, representatives of different generations have their own “legend” associated with this product. Nowadays there are few people who remember the first GOST for sausage. It was introduced in 1936 by order of the People's Commissar Food Industry Anastas Mikoyan. He specifically flew to Chicago to get acquainted with the most advanced meat processing enterprises in the world at that time.
The composition of the first "Doctor's", for example, included premium beef without veins, lean pork shoulder, ice water, nitrite salt and table salt, whole cow's milk, sugar, egg, ground nutmeg, cardamom, black pepper.
GOST for this type of sausage remained unchanged until the 1970s. At that time, there was a shortage of meat in the country due to a decline in livestock farming. It was then that it was officially allowed to add two percent starch to sausage mince. None of the consumers even felt anything, but the savings in meat nationwide turned out to be impressive. In addition to starch, animal protein substitutes, so-called caseinates, were also allowed.
This allowed not only to increase production sausages, but also reduce their price. So, “Doctorskaya”, instead of two rubles and thirty kopecks, began to cost ten kopecks less. But its taste, like other sausages, has changed. Now, according to GOST 1979, they could be made from buffalo or yak meat. The composition could include trimmed pork and veal, as well as trimmed single-grade goat meat and lamb (frozen meat was not forbidden); raw pork and beef fat, side and back fat; processed offal, egg melange, dry cream and first grade flour.
Thus, for 100 kilograms of Lyubitelskaya sausage, 35 kilograms of first-grade trimmed beef, 40 kilograms of trimmed lean pork, and 25 kilograms of back fat were used. The additives included: salt (2.5 kg), sodium nitrite - 5.6 g, sugar - 110 g, black pepper - 85 g, nutmeg or cardamom - 55 g, spice mixture - 250 g.
But not all sausages were so meaty. For example, GOST for breakfast sausage allowed its production from sodium caseinate, wheat flour, potato starch.
Boiled Beef sausage"in addition to the beef itself, beef brains were added. "Moscow sausage" according to GOST 1986 consisted exclusively of trimmed beef and back fat. By the way, GOST 1986 was not very different from GOST 1979. The list of spices was slightly expanded, which now included garlic .
GOST standards for semi-smoked and smoked sausages appeared in 1941. This was due to the beginning of the war. There was a need for sausages that could be stored for a long time and would be satisfying. To make them, they took trimmed beef or pork (chilled, defrosted (thawed) or frozen). Added pork belly, pork fat, bacon or fatty pork trimmings, lamb fat, spices and certainly pure chemical nitrate. During the war, this GOST was changed several times. There was a period when it was possible to use animal bones, sinews, and other not entirely edible parts of animals ground into powder.
After the 1990s, GOSTs were abolished. Technical specifications appeared. They are not adopted at the state level; they are developed by each enterprise individually. Therefore, among the many varieties and types of sausages today there is great amount those that do not initially contain meat. Soy products natural meat has long been replaced, and the necessary taste is created by flavorings and emulsifiers.
Nowadays, you increasingly come across statements that during the USSR period this was better, sometimes tastier, sometimes fresher. But I remember how my mother-in-law and I met after work in 1989 on Tverskaya, maybe it was still Gorky Street then, and we “combed” all the stores where people “grabbed” cheese, milk, minced meat in the queues - we had to feed two hungry people men. With coupons - cigarettes, sugar. Sausage? I don’t really remember how or where they bought it. A couple of years earlier, in 1987, I worked in one of the capital’s editorial offices, and it was heaven there: meat in the store for employees, and any sausage in the buffet and pickles on the table in the dining room. My friends ordered me to buy something for the table for celebrations. For the holidays, in special stores, we were given a varied, full-fledged set - a couple of loaves of imported high-quality salami - cervelat, always very fresh red, white fish, caviar, of course, and a bunch of cans, the existence of which buyers of Soviet stores did not even suspect. It was a shame to receive these “bags” of food on May 9th. When our veterans were given 10 times less and meagerly. In the glorious Brezhnev years, 1975 - there was a grocery store in our house, and I don’t remember that the shelves were empty - two or three types of boiled sausage - “doctoral” - dietary, “amateur” with fat, veal - (sometimes) with tasty fat - they were definitely on sale, and boiled-smoked - “Armavir” and “Krakovskaya” were there. Not always, but very often. There were queues for the “Moscow”, “Tallinn” ones. However, they were always there in the USSR. Mom was friends with the manager, dad with the butcher. Everything was there. “From under the counter,” as they used to say - almost everyone. But - this is Moscow. And in the summer , I went to my grandmother at sea for 3 months, and they sent me a large box of meat and sausage. This was not the case in Crimea, or it was on the market - it was expensive. My father's friends came to us from Saratov, and the house smelled before they left. like in the sausage department. Sausage trains left Moscow for other cities of the USSR. In my desktop “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” - 1971 edition, 28 varieties of Soviet sausage are listed. There are names there that have nothing in my memory are associated - “chopped ham”, “glazed”, “puff”. But “Brunschweig”, “cervelat”, “delicacy”, “Soviet” - have crossed over from the USSR in our days. This helped me remember about my favorite liverwurst, which I They forbade it, they say, “dogs only eat this kind of thing." But it was delicious, like everything that is forbidden. Sausage in the USSR cost: 2.90, 2.20, boiled, and 3, there, with kopecks, boiled-smoked. In any case, the affordability of the price did not in any way affect its quality. They say that after the severe drought of 1972 and the death of livestock, for the first time changes were made to GOST for Soviet sausage and ingredients began to be added that outweighed the meat content in it. Our friends in the Baltics had a house and their own farm. That's how I tried it for the first time raw smoked sausage from home smokehouse, prepared according to a European recipe - the Spanish “fuet” is not even close. The secret of the “deliciousness” of sausage from the times of the USSR, as in the “psychotest”, is logical - there is a shortage, memories from the past are almost always tasty. And, besides, sausage was prepared for many decades only from fresh meat- chilled. From what - now - it’s scary to imagine. The future belongs to small sausage factories of cooperators. Expensive, but delicious.
I, like probably many others, associate sausage with the taste of childhood. I remember how after work my mother brought a roll of paper with “Doctor’s” - its aroma spread throughout the apartment. It didn’t sit in the refrigerator for a long time, it died that same evening. Eh, it was time! “What’s special about this vaunted 2.20 sausage?” - young people who have not lived through the Soviet era are surprised now. Nothing special, a mere trifle - they just made sausage from meat!…
It is no secret that no product in Soviet society, especially, so to speak, in the late Soviet period, had such social and cultural significance as sausage.
It was not just a product, but a kind of symbol of the Soviet system. A sign of prosperity in the years of total shortage, the reason and most frequent reason for the nostalgia of several generations of emigrants, a full-fledged theme of the most diverse forms of folklore and even literary works.
We knew from childhood: our sausage is the most delicious! I mean, Soviet sausage, the paradox of which consisted, firstly, in a strange discrepancy between cost and quality, when the second was much superior to the first, and secondly, in availability at a price and inaccessibility by... method of acquisition, because behind the product itself there is nothing To eat everyday food, I had to travel to other cities and stand in kilometer-long queues.
Cheap food was needed by hungry Russia in the 1930s. To carry out the instructions of the party and government, Anastas Mikoyan went to Chicago - the most advanced sausage production at that time was located there. Soviet officials looked at a local meat processing plant and ordered exactly the same one for themselves. True, the recipe for the sausage was already developed in Moscow.
The revival of Russian sausages took place when Soviet power was already firmly established in Russia. Namely, in April 1936, People's Commissar of the Food Industry Anastas Mikoyan signed an order for the production of new meat products: Doctor's, Lyubitelskaya, Tea, Veal and Krakow sausages, Milk sausages and Hunter's sausages.
Some of the recipes were developed anew, others were restored from earlier times. It is noteworthy that Doctor’s sausage was specially created for “sick people with poor health as a result of the Civil War and tsarist despotism.”
The recipe for “amending public health” was verified to the smallest detail: 100 kg of sausage contained 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs and 2 kg cow's milk.
Over the past 70 years, GOST standards for this sausage have changed, and more than once: both the war and the Soviet shortage had an impact. The first varieties of Soviet sausage differed in the quality of meat. In “Lyubitelskaya” and “Doctorskaya” it was of the highest grade, and somewhere - first and even second.
During these same years, more than 20 large meat processing plants were built - in Moscow, Leningrad, Semipalatinsk, Engels, Dnepropetrovsk, Sverdlovsk and other cities, equipped with the most modern equipment for that time. It was not in vain that A. Mikoyan went to get acquainted with sausage production in USA!
During the war years, the total losses of the meat processing industry exceeded 1 billion rubles. Many meat processing plants were partially or completely destroyed. The raw material base also suffered. The German army removed and slaughtered 17 million heads of cattle, 7 million horses, 20 million pigs, 27 million sheep and goats from the occupied territory of the USSR.
However, unprecedented measures were taken to preserve the livestock and provide the army and rear with meat products. Millions of large and small livestock and horses were evacuated from the western territories.
In accordance with wartime requirements, the assortment was restructured towards the production of transportable products that are less susceptible to spoilage, such as corned beef, smoked and canned meats, as well as semi-smoked and smoked sausages.
For the civilian population, many enterprises have established production bone broths And liver sausages. During the difficult war years, in an environment of acute shortage of raw materials, especially in besieged Leningrad, opportunities were sought to use all kinds of substitutes for meat raw materials, such as glycerin, albumin, gelatin, agar-agar, edible herbs and even tops of garden crops.
When a flooded barge with peas was raised from the bottom of Ladoga in January 1942, the sausage factory quickly developed a technology for producing pea sausage with the addition of onions, cereals and flour. But this was only a forced concession to wartime. People worked 12–14 hours, exceeding the plan and providing the army and rear with food, and, of course, they won!
From the moment of its “birth” until the end of the 50s, the main recipe of “Doctorskaya” remained practically unchanged. In the 60s, experiments began with fattening animals. This affected the sausage: it began to smell like fish, sometimes chickens, and sometimes like a chemical plant producing fertilizers.
The post-war restoration of the destroyed economy was followed by an era of technical re-equipment of meat processing plants, which coincided with a deterioration in productivity and insufficient growth of livestock numbers. The reason for the decline in animal quality was the 1965 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, which cited the previously pursued policy in the field of animal husbandry.
During Brezhnev's reign, meat production in the USSR began to decline. Scientists have begun developing technologies for combined meat products: sausages have soy protein, milk protein, so-called blood products and even such “indigestible” things as sodium casenate.
To legitimize the presence of “cardboard” in “Doctorskaya” and other sausages, new GOST standards have appeared that take into account all these additives. For example, the cooked breakfast sausage officially consisted of sodium casenate, wheat flour and potato starch.
Insufficient funding for livestock production due to the arms race and other problems in agriculture have led to a shortage of raw materials for food production. However, it was only in the 70s that the first changes in sausage recipes appeared. As a result of the unprecedented drought of 1972, hundreds of thousands of head of cattle had to be put under the knife due to lack of feed.
In 1974, some relaxations were introduced into GOST standards for the first time. IN chopped meat it was allowed to add up to 2% starch or flour or animal protein substitutes - milk or blood. None of the sausage consumers could feel any changes. And the underreported 2% of meat throughout the country provided huge savings. In addition, cosenates (substitutes) cost mere pennies compared to the price of a kilogram of beef.
In a word, by allowing additives, we, in some way, even took another step towards communism: we reduced the price per kilogram of “Doctorskaya” from 2.3 rubles. up to 2.2 rub.
However, temporary difficulties with raw materials turned out to be permanent. A concept such as a shortage arose, when kilometer-long queues lined up for sausage products, a Soviet phenomenon appeared - the so-called “sausage” trains (many still remember this joke: What is it? Long, green and smells like sausage? - Moscow train).
The state skillfully supported the demand for sausage by creating a mythical aura of mystery and legends based primarily on original recipe preparing Soviet sausage. A planned economy that did not know marketing sometimes gave birth to real advertising masterpieces, as a result of which any sausage was simply swept off the shelves.
So they said that the “Member of the Politburo” sausage would soon go on sale, on the cut of which Lenin’s profile made of lard was visible. Or Ostankino sausage is made from the remains of the enemies of socialism. Although there were those who considered K. Simonov to be the author of her recipe. Remember in “Battle on the Ice”: “People and horses have already mixed together...”
The shortage gave way to a system of coupons for basic food products, then to a total shortage and, ultimately, to the victory of market relations and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It was then that people poured from impoverished Russia to prosperous countries for an established life, for full counters, for good sausage. For domestic sausage began to be accused of all sins - and toilet paper They allegedly add them to it, and find buttons/human nails/rat tails and other horrors in it, and generally make it out of who knows what.
And a flood of imported sausage poured into Russia. However, it turned out to be somewhat strange, unusual and even - scary to think - completely tasteless, in any case, our consumers expected more from it.
As it turned out, high technology makes it possible to use not the best raw materials in sausage. Moreover, in the West, in general, it is not customary to use even first-grade meat for sausage; it is only sold for sale. Well, high-quality raw materials are incompatible with market relations! And it was foreigners who valued our sausages very highly, paying tribute to them when visiting the USSR.
And no wonder. After all, even the most popular and quite affordable boiled sausages Lyubitelskaya and Doctorskaya consisted of meat, and of the highest grade. That is, for 100 kg of top-grade boiled Lyubitelskaya sausage, 35 kg of top-grade trimmed beef, 40 kg of lean lean pork, and 25 kg of back fat were required.
Similarly, for 100 kg of Doctor's, 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs and 2 kg of cow's milk were consumed. Sausages with this composition were truly unique in quality and nutritional value! Unless, of course, some of the raw materials went “to the left”...
If you believe the statistics, until 1990 in the USSR there were more than 40 kg of sausage per person per year. It turns out to be a paradox! The Soviet Union, the world leader in sausage production per capita, never had it. Sometimes the above-mentioned one was instantly swept off the shelves, sometimes the sellers held it under threat of dismissal.
And after some time, when the fainting at the full foreign counters ended, the concept of “sausage emigration” was replaced by the concept of “sausage nostalgia.” And stories appeared about how some of the former compatriots allegedly established the production of “those” sausages according to “the same” recipes. And they allegedly had unprecedented success in the West, especially among their former compatriots.
And for those who still did not get such sausage, Russian relatives and friends from Russia brought domestic sausages as a gift. However, the Soviet sausage from childhood could not be returned; both the taste and the price became different. Or had those affected by the tsarist regime been cured by that time, and sausage as a healing remedy had lost its relevance, and therefore disappeared?
However, not only emigrants, but also Russian residents are nostalgic for Soviet-era sausages. And, as you know, it is Soviet brands that are bought most of all - Doctorskaya, Lyubitelskaya, Krakovskaya, Moskovskaya and, of course, Servelat.
The affordability of sausages reflected both the idea of equality and the secondary role of the peasantry, whose labor was so modestly paid. And cheap sausage made from high-quality meat disappeared simultaneously with the disappearance of the Soviet Union.
However, it did not completely disappear. After all, a modern GOST for sausages has been developed, preserving continuity with the previous, Soviet one. And although there is no “same” sausage and there cannot be, because everything changes - raw materials, technologies, packaging, Soviet brands live and prosper. But today, to buy Lyubitelskaya from Moskovskaya, you don’t have to go to other cities or stand in line at six o’clock in the morning.
Today, for most Russians, sausage is meat product number one, although it's more of a snack than a meal. “Doctor’s” remains one of the most beloved and popular. Many enterprises produce sausage, and both according to GOST and TU - technical conditions developed at this enterprise. Therefore, on the shelves you can often find several types of “Doctorskaya”, and any other sausage, in different casings and at different prices.
Today, technical specifications (TS) are approved not by the Council of Ministers of Russia, but by the enterprise itself, which operates on the principle: less meat - more substitutes. From the point of view of product quality, the most hectic time is considered to be the early 90s, when competition for sales markets was life and death. It happened that we ate sausage... without sausage at all, that is, without meat! Manufacturers made a fat emulsion, added “flavor” - and it was done.
On great proletarian holidays, minced chicken was added to such “sausage.” Today the situation has not improved much - second-grade sausages are 70% (!) made up of soybeans and various chemical additives that have nothing to do with meat. Soybean absorbs moisture very well; 1 kg of such powder requires 5-6 liters of water.
We calculate: if up to 10 kg of soy is used for 100 kg of individual sausage, it means that up to 60 liters of water also goes there. Here's 70 kg out of 100 that are not meat at all! Carrageenan is also widely used: a vegetable protein based seaweed. It is very moisture-intensive, and when mixed with water in the final product, it well retains the density of the product and its solidity.
Soviet sausage will always be remembered with nostalgia. Grandparents - that in the days of their youth it was real, made of meat. Their children - how difficult it was to get it in principle, and if it was possible, then the sandwich became a holiday. And how the coupons were sold. And today's youth are already accustomed to coming to the store and choosing sausage according to their taste and wallet.
Often, when we hear the word “history,” we imagine dusty shelves of archives and libraries, something distant and dilapidated. We rarely think about the fact that history lives in our home, in the most common everyday things and even in the food products that we eat every day... And it is some products that tell the story of their birth that can tell the story of the entire country. Don't believe me?
Then answer the question - what products from the table of an ordinary Soviet person can we still find on our table? That's right: Borodino bread, ice cream, Baikal and Duchess sodas, however, the list could go on for a long time. But, perhaps, the most honorable place will be occupied by “Doctor’s” sausage - one of the most popular food products today, which has become a kind of symbol of the Soviet country and one of the most famous brands of our time.
But the history of “Doctor’s” sausage is a reflection of almost the entire Soviet history with its kinks and complexities.
The 1930s of the twentieth century were both difficult and joyful for the USSR at the same time. The fratricidal Civil War has ended and the national economy is being restored. Almost throughout the entire country, the unification of individual peasant farms into collective farms has been completed, and the kulaks have been liquidated as a class. Great construction projects are underway, a powerful industry is being created, which a decade later will allow the country to win the Great War...
Despite all the great plans, there is not enough meat in the country - this is due to the previous difficult years. And the health of the population must be restored and maintained - the builders of communism must be strong and healthy. Therefore, the idea arises to create a product with a high protein content that could replace meat.
A special role in the creation and development of the food industry in the USSR and in the history of the “Doctor’s” sausage will be played by Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, People’s Commissar of the Food Industry of the USSR since 1934. It was he who had to create the country's food industry from scratch. Mikoyan chose the USA as a model, where this industry was already quite well developed. Thanks to the borrowing of “industrial” American food, several varieties of sausages, industrially processed milk, a variety of canned food, ice cream appeared on the tables of Soviet citizens...
Under the close personal control of Mikoyan, the construction of several large food industry enterprises began in the USSR - for the production of milk, sausages, and canned food.
April 29, 1936 A.I. Mikoyan signed an order to begin production of several varieties of sausages, a special place among which was occupied by sausage intended to “improve the health of persons whose health was compromised as a result of the Civil War and who suffered from the arbitrariness of the tsarist regime.” It was assumed that this type of sausage would be intended for those receiving treatment in sanatoriums and hospitals.
The recipe for this product was developed by the best specialists in the country, doctors, and employees of the All-Russian Research Institute of Meat Industry. According to the recipe (GOST 23670-79), “Boiled doctor’s sausage of the highest grade” per 100 kg of sausage should contain 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs or melange and 2 kg of whole or skim cow’s milk powder. The minced meat for the sausage was made from fresh meat and had to be double chopped. A minimum of cooking ingredients were used as seasonings. table salt; granulated sugar or glucose; ground nutmeg or cardamom, spicy seasonings were excluded.
There is a legend that initially they wanted to give this sausage the name “”. However, the authors of the recipe quickly realized that the combination “Stalin’s sausage” could be incorrectly interpreted by the all-powerful NKVD and came up with a name that remained in history and well reflected the quality and purpose of this product.
Until the 50s, the recipe and quality of the sausage remained unchanged according to the standard. Of course, the sausages produced by different meat processing plants varied. This depended on the quality of the raw materials supplied to the plant and on the experience of the employees. The ideal and model was the sausage of the Mikoyanovsky meat processing plant - the capital's giant, which primarily supplied the nomenclature, purchased the most expensive and high-quality raw materials. At the same time, sausage was by no means an integral part of the special ration of representatives of the party and state elite - it could be bought at almost any grocery store.
Interestingly, the cost of “Doctorskaya” was significantly higher than its retail price. In Doktorskaya stores they sold for 2 rubles 20 kopecks. In the mid-70s, with this money you could buy, for example, 220 boxes of matches, 11 ice creams in a waffle cup, 10 packs of Belomorkanal cigarettes, i.e. the price of this sausage was quite acceptable for ordinary citizens.
Changes in the quality of sausage began only in the 70s and this was primarily due to the difficulties that continuously reformed agriculture began to experience and, of course, with the drought and crop failure of the early 70s. It was at this time that it was allowed to add up to 2% starch or flour to sausage mince.
Dramatic changes in the fate of sausage - like all countries - will begin in the mid-80s. The composition of the raw materials will change, and in 1997 a new GOST will appear, in accordance with which the name “doctoral” will turn into a brand.
But still, most of us, coming to the meat department of a supermarket and choosing sausage, will first of all pay attention to the name “Doctorskaya”….
Born in the USSR: Doctor's Sausage and the Kopeika Car
SOVIET SAUSAGE OR LIES ABOUT TASTY PRODUCTS IN THE USSR FOR CITIZENS THAT 25 YEARS AGO WERE WIPPED WITH NEWSPAPERS WITH TOXIC PRINTING INK AND NOW THEY MISS SOVIET SAUSAGE, I EXPLAIN. THERE IS EVER LESS FOOD, AND THERE IS MORE AND MORE TALK ABOUT IT. THERE ARE MORE MYTHS ABOUT FOOD. ESPECIALLY, FOR SOMEHOW, IT IS FASHIONABLE TODAY TO REMEMBER SOVIET SAUSAGE AND THE DAMNED SOVIET GUESTS. DEAR SOVIET ROMANTICS, YOU DID NOT READ THE GUESTS. IN THE BEST CASE, YOU WERE TOLD ABOUT THEM BY SOMEONE WHO READ THE FIRST PAGES AND HEAVED A BREAKING OUT OF RELIEF: WELL, THANK GOD, 99% OF MEAT WAS PUT IN THE DINING SAUSAGE!
You know, in that same “Tea” sausage that no one ate, according to GOST they put 70% second-grade beef, 20% lean pork and 10% side bacon. However, this sausage clearly tasted like cardboard. Why? Yes, because GOSTs contained extensive notes that scrupulously described what could be replaced with what in production: meat mass for a mixture of boiled bones, starch and food plasma, emulsified vegetable fats in margarine and Buterbrodny butter - for mineral oil (remember how butter exploded in a frying pan, leaving behind a black spot and a tar-smelling void?). GOSTs were constantly edited, for some products - every season, depending on slaughter standards, milk yield levels, harvest, imports... Let's take the famous sausage GOST 23670-79 from 1979, as amended in 1980. In it we read, for example: “Allowed in exchange beef, pork, lamb, joint use of a protein stabilizer, beef or pork, or lamb mass, food plasma (serum), blood, starch or wheat flour.”
GOST and bookmark standards were for internal propaganda (they say, calm down, dear citizens, even though our sausage is real) and throwing dust in the eyes of foreigners (here, our people only eat natural meat, fresh milk They wash it down and eat bread and butter.) For real use, there were notes to GOSTs, which were printed directly in the document. Soviet sausages best case scenario corresponded to these notes to GOST. At worst, ground goat bones, rancid flour and dead rats were wrapped in a “cow passer”. But GOST itself was more for a screen. I quote: “2.6. Allowed during production boiled sausages, sausages, sausages and meat loaves use: egg powder in the amount of 274 g instead of 1 kg of melange or 1 kg (24 pcs.) chicken eggs; hemoglobin preparation or food blood in an amount of 0.5-1% by weight of raw materials; spice and garlic extracts instead of natural ones; protein stabilizer to the weight of raw materials in an amount of up to 5% - for boiled sausages, sausages and meat loaves of the first grade and up to 6% - for boiled sausages and meat loaves of the second grade; beef, pork or lamb mass obtained by processing bones in saline solutions, in the amount of 4 kg instead of 1 kg of meat mass obtained by mechanical pressing, with a decrease in the mass of added water by 3 kg; food plasma (serum) of the blood of slaughtered animals to the mass of raw materials in the following quantities: up to 5% instead of added water when producing boiled sausages, frankfurters, small sausages and premium meat loaves; up to 15% instead of added water when producing boiled sausages, frankfurters, sausages and meat loaves of the first and second grade; up to 10% in exchange for 2% trimmed pork meat and 8% water or 3% trimmed beef (or lamb) meat and 7% water or up to 15% in exchange for 3% trimmed pork meat and 12% water or 4% trimmed beef (or lamb) meat ) and 11% water; Instead of beef, pork, lamb, it is allowed to use a protein stabilizer, beef or pork, or lamb mass, food plasma (serum) of blood, starch or wheat flour.”
And if now some Murzilka purrs to you that she studied at the Institute of Food Industry and knows that Soviet sausage was made only from meat, kick the Murzilka in the neck: she’s either lying, or she didn’t study a damn thing, and from the first year she settled down sweetly in the meat department workshop and, instead of exams, brought bales of first-class beef and lean pork to the teachers. The same one that, quite officially, according to GOST, was not in your sausage. And it was only in batches prepared for special distributors and nomenklatura. Some plants even had a special workshop where everything was done according to the basic requirements of GOST, without any revisions. But this product was only for bureaucrats, thieves and... inspectors. All sorts of SES and OBKhSS rolled out from inspections with huge bags full of meat, butter and GOST sausages. In one Ural city, an official carried a bribe on a pre-revolutionary sleigh, and the sleigh crushed him quite well. Gostovskoy sausage chopped off half a leg. But at least Gostovskaya...
These are the norms of life. Please note that I am writing about norms. Not about shortages, theft, but only about norms. About the fact that even with a successful combination of circumstances (for example, you snatched a sausage “thrown away” at 11 am, and this sausage was made according to GOST), instead of 99% meat you could, quite legally, get a mixture of bone meal, wood glue, plasma , starch and boiled bladders. And if you take into account the level of theft, sloppiness and unsanitary conditions, then your sausage was... I don’t even know what it was. Imagine a piece of cardboard soaked in blood standing in the heat. Introduced? This is roughly what your sausage looked like back then.
Listen to the daughter of a Soviet merchandiser. The quality of Soviet products is a myth. The country was poor, there was a shortage all around - where would quality come from? According to GOST, sausages contained at least 5% meat (the rest could be replaced); the sausages were flavored with saltpeter to preserve color. Palm oil By the way, they were importing it back then. Preservatives, stabilizers, dyes were antediluvian and quite official. In production potato chips(long plates, “For the obese” were called) the frying oil was replaced every 8 months. Also according to GOST. Creamy ice cream was found only in megacities - the rest were content with milk and vegetable fat, at best, it was of two varieties - in a glass and on a stick, sometimes chocolate or berry color (or in half, called “Zabava”). In some cities - oh my! - there was only “Tomato” ice cream. People choked on the “Potato” cake and the “Log” cake, and they were molded from biscuit crumbs remaining on the conveyor belt, mixed with margarine and condensed milk. Please note, the ingredients were not indicated on the packaging. And all this crap was terribly expensive by those standards. The salary of a technical school teacher is 120 rubles, and a kilogram butter premium 3 rub. 40 kopecks, premium sausage - also 3 rubles. 40 kopecks, and candy in chocolate glaze“Pilot”, “Swallow”, “Petrel” 3 rubles. 40 kopecks Chocolate candies cost up to 15 rubles per kilogram and appeared a couple of times a year. The country had three price zones and special coefficients for each type of product: roughly speaking, the deeper into the forest, the higher the prices and the fewer products.
So don’t talk about GOST standards and quality. And don’t talk about the Stalin-Khrushchev era either. First of all, I'm writing about the 70s and 80s. Secondly, under Stalin and Khrushchev, at the time of the “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food,” there were still food in stores, but there was absolutely no one to eat them: all these balyks, butter, and caviar were inaccessible to the people. According to the testimony of sellers of that time, butter was bought for 30-50 grams, sweets - 100 grams, sausages - at most 300 grams. And not every day. Old women came for “butter” after retirement. “To enjoy”... When my mother, while doing an internship at a grocery store, asked at some meeting why they took 30 grams of oil, she was told: “Very actual question, fellow intern! Our people want to eat fresh produce every day, so they come to the store every day for a new portion of butter and sausage.”
