In the X-XIII centuries, with the development of cities and consumption, the range of cultivated crops expanded. During these times, onions, cucumbers, dill, beets, plums, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and garlic were popular. Since they were grown mainly by urban residents, the price for these products was quite high, so the vegetables, fruits and greens mentioned above appeared on the tables of narrow social strata.
A revolution in nutrition was made by sour rye bread, or rather, not so much by the bread itself, as by the fermentation technology, due to which the dough was loosened. Like all food novelties, sour bread for a long time remained a delicacy of the princely environment. A similar situation was with kvass and kissel. However, later these products were tasted by all segments of the population and mastered the technology of preparation.
The baptism of Russia and the ensuing expansion of contacts with the countries of the Christian world also influenced Russian cuisine. Spices, seasonings, overseas fruit plants began to be added to food. The structure of nutrition has also changed: during religious fasts, the share of meat and dairy products in the diet decreased, while plant foods and fish, respectively, increased.
It is difficult to say how significant changes occurred at that time in the structure of nutrition of the rural population, whose very superficial Christianization dragged on for several centuries. However, in the immediate vicinity of the cities, the first specialized fishing villages began to appear, and in the cities themselves in the second half of the 12th - first half of the 13th centuries. professional fishing and fish trade are developing.
From the 14th century, water mills began to be used. At the same time, the stove was changing: the old Russian one with a semicircular top gave way to a stove with a flat top. As a result, they began to bake not only the usual bread, but also sweets, such as gingerbread. The growing popularity of cereals is associated with the development of crop production. From vegetables, those that could be stored for a long time were preferred. It becomes a habit to consume the fruits of cultivated plants and berries. For example, in Novgorod there were not only boyar apple orchards, but also small gardens in the yards of middle-class citizens. There is also such a way of processing products as preservation.
Meat consumption markedly decreased during this period compared to the 10th-13th centuries. Hunting is being replaced by animal husbandry. There were two main ways to store meat: freezing and salting. The established practice of religious fasting has made fishing one of the most important industries.
Since the 14th century, watermills have been used
The greatest changes in Russian food culture occurred in the 16th-17th centuries. Apples, pears, plums, cherries, sweet cherries, raspberries, strawberries were cultivated everywhere.
With dairy products, the situation remained practically unchanged: fresh and sour milk was consumed, cottage cheese, cheese, butter were produced, and sour cream appeared. Of the meat products, they still consumed beef, lamb, pork, they began to eat more poultry meat and eggs. Only horns and hooves did not go into food. And everything that could be eaten in one form or another was carefully prepared. Fish processing technologies are improving significantly: now it is salted, smoked, boiled. Caviar, screech is widely used; fish is used to make fish oil, fish glue, everything is used, up to the fused bladder and scales.
Lunch was recognized as the main meal in Russia
From the 16th century, the division into rural, monastic and royal cuisines began. The first was the least rich and varied, but had its own charm: lunch was recognized as the main meal in Russia, so its organization was given special attention. During the holidays, about 20 dishes could be served, which were put on the table in a strictly defined order: first a cold appetizer, then soup, the second and pies for dessert.
The basis of the diet of the monks was plant foods: vegetables, herbs, fruits. The royal cuisine was famous for the abundance of the refectory table, which was sometimes torn not only from a variety of Russian dishes, but also from overseas outlandish delicacies.
As “hot and liquid” there was a semblance of modern okroshka and, of course, cabbage soup, brew, stews, fish soup, etc .;
Various porridges with vegetable oil;
Meat, game and fish of various types of processing, eggs;
Coarse rye bread, amaranth bread, pancakes;
Almost all vegetables except nightshade: leafy, pumpkin, legumes, root crops and tubers, bulbous and stem;
Fruits: pome fruits, stone fruits and berries in a huge assortment;
Dairy and sour-milk products in a huge assortment;
Pickles, jams;
Nuts, seeds, dried fruits in abundance;
From drinks: sbitni, mead, kvass, tinctures and decoctions of various herbs, Ivan-tea.
What did not eat:
Sugar. It just wasn't. But honey was consumed in large quantities;
Tea and coffee. Instead, they drank Ivan-tea, which has dozens of popular names;
A lot of salt, because. she was expensive and saved;
Tomatoes and potatoes;
Soups and borscht. The fashion for them appeared in the 17th century;
They didn't drink vodka, they didn't smoke tobacco.
Rule FIRST and MAIN. If you are healthy, eat mostly the same as your ancestors living in the same area ate.
The food traditions of different peoples are different, and they evolved over many centuries. Therefore, if even the best nutritional habits of one nation are mechanically transferred to another, this will not add to health, since it will take quite a long time for the human gastrointestinal tract to adapt and perceive unusual food as native. It has been established everywhere that centenarians in various regions of the world lead an active lifestyle that they have been accustomed to since childhood. In particular, they go a lot at any time of the year and in any weather.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, their strong family and social status is also characteristic. Centenarians, their relatives and friends have a highly developed sense of family integrity and continuity of generations.
The ideal food is the food of a native home, a native hearth, which is based on recipes passed down from grandmother to daughter and granddaughter, on family traditions, on the traditions of a given area, a given people, a given nationality.
This will be the ideal nutrition for a healthy person.
So, the most ideal diet for a healthy person is the diet that his ancestors adhered to. A clear confirmation is the health and nutrition situation in the United States.
This is a young country, consisting of emigrants, often torn away from their homeland and forgotten all sorts of national traditions. America has no traditions! And that is why there are so many patients with metabolic disorders. This is the richest country in the world, but it is also the country of the fattest and sickest people!
And it is completely logical that most of the newfangled diets and nutrition theories appear in America, they simply do not know which tradition to cling to, often snatching various places from various traditions, resulting in a completely indigestible result.
That is why the theories of P. Bragg and G. Shelton, N. Walker, etc., wild in the opinion of a nutritionist, could appear there.
Traditional food.
To illustrate the importance of this issue, I would like to present some research results.
Even under the Soviet Union, while studying the problem of longevity, one gerontological expedition conducted research in two nearby villages in Nagorno-Karabakh. One village was Russian, the other Azerbaijani.
It turned out that there are many long-livers among Azerbaijanis, and in a Russian village people died early, despite the fact that the inhabitants of this village were members of a religious community and led an extremely correct way of life.
The conclusion made by gerontologists is unequivocal, those who follow the traditional way of life live longer. Traditional nutrition, which is typical for a given area and each area has its own, is the factor that preserves health and increases life expectancy.
This is explained by the fact that the type of food in each ethnic group is formed over several generations, which for a long time selected products adapted specifically to this area and allowing them to survive in this particular area.
That is why a healthy person should eat the way his ancestors ate, and not the way Gennady Malakhov, Paul Bragg, Herbert Shelton and many others write.
But, I emphasize this applies to a healthy person.
We must not forget that the vast majority of our population are people with certain diseases. How to eat them?
I won't say anything new here. A sick person should adjust his diet to his disease. Any dietary textbook will help him with this, where dietary regimes, food composition and total caloric content of the diet are described in detail, depending on each specific disease.
Such food will be truly healing. Well, as soon as you get rid of your illness, you can move on to the traditional food for your area.
The history of Old Russian cuisine can be clearly traced from the 9th century.
In general, Russian cuisine is characterized by the following features: the extreme constancy of the composition of dishes and their flavor range, strict canons of cooking. The origins of Russian cooking begin with the creation of cereal porridges, primarily spelled, oatmeal, rye (the so-called green porridge) and the national Russian kvass (that is, sour) bread made from rye flour.
Already in the middle of the 9th century, that black, rye, porous and baked bread made from leavened sourdough appeared, without which the Russian menu is generally unthinkable. Following him, other types of national bread and flour products were created: dezhni, loaves, juicy, pancakes, pies, pancakes, bagels, baika, donuts. The last three categories are almost a century later, after the introduction of wheat flour.
Adherence to kvass, sour was also reflected in the creation of kvass proper, the range of which reached two to three dozen types, very different in taste from each other, as well as in the invention of primordial Russian oatmeal, rye, wheat kissels, which appeared almost 900 years earlier than modern berry starch jelly.
At the very beginning of the Old Russian period, all the main drinks were formed, in addition to kvass: all kinds of perevarovs (sbitni), which were a combination of decoctions of various forest herbs with honey and spices, as well as honey and honey, that is, natural honey fermented with berry juice or simply diluted juices and water to different consistency.
Although the recipes for honeys, medkovs and kvass became more complicated and supplemented over the following centuries, these products by themselves remained steadfastly on the Russian table until the 18th century.
Kashi, although they were insipid according to the principles of their manufacture, were sometimes acidified with sour milk. They also differed in diversity, subdivided according to the types of grain (spelt, rye, oats, barley, buckwheat, millet, wheat), according to the types of grain crushing or its running (for example, barley gave three cereals: barley, Dutch, barley; buckwheat four: core , Veligorka, Smolensk, I did it, wheat is also three: whole, korkot, semolina, etc.), and, finally, by the type of consistency, for porridges were divided into crumbly, slurry and gruel (quite thin).
All this made it possible to vary from 6-7 types of grain and three types of legumes (peas, beans, lentils) several dozen different cereals. In addition, a variety of flour products were made from the flour of these crops. All this bread, mainly flour food diversified mainly with fish, mushrooms, forest berries, vegetables, and less often with milk and meat.
Already in the early Middle Ages, a clear, or rather, sharp division of the Russian table into lean (vegetable, fish, mushroom) and stern (milk meat, egg) arose. At the same time, the Lenten table included far from all plant products.
So, beets, carrots and sugar, which were also classified as fast food, were excluded from it. Drawing a sharp line between fast and fast meals, fencing off products of various origins from each other with an impenetrable wall and strictly preventing their mixing, naturally led to the creation of original dishes, for example, various types of fish soup, pancakes, kundums (mushroom dumplings).
The fact that most of the days in the year from 192 to 216 in different years were fast, caused a quite natural desire for a variety of Lenten meals. Hence the abundance of mushroom and fish dishes in the Russian national cuisine, the tendency to use various vegetable raw materials from grain (cereals) to forest berries and herbs (snotweed, nettle, sorrel, quinoa, angelica, etc.).
At first, attempts to diversify the Lenten table were expressed in the fact that each type of vegetable, mushroom or fish was cooked separately. So, cabbage, turnip, radish, peas, cucumbers (vegetables known since the 10th century) were cooked and eaten raw, salted (pickled), steamed, boiled or baked separately from one another.
Salads and especially vinaigrettes were not characteristic of Russian cuisine at that time and appeared in Russia only in the middle of the 19th century. But they were also originally made mainly with one vegetable, which is why they were called cucumber salad, beetroot salad, etc.
Mushroom dishes were even more differentiated. Each type of mushrooms, milk mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms, ceps, morels and stoves (champignons), etc., was not only salted, but also cooked completely separately. The situation was exactly the same with fish consumed boiled, dried, salted, baked, and less often fried.
Sigovina, taimenina, pike, halibut, catfish, salmon, sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, beluga and others were considered each individually a special, different dish, and not just fish. Therefore, the ear could be perch, ruff, burbot or sturgeon.
Thus, the number of dishes by name was huge, but the technological differences between them were small.
The taste diversity of such homogeneous dishes was achieved in two ways: on the one hand, the difference in heat and cold processing, as well as through the use of various oils, mainly vegetable hemp, walnut, poppy, wood (olive) and much later than sunflower, and on the other hand, the use of spices .
Of the latter, onion and garlic were more often used, and in very large quantities, as well as parsley, mustard, anise, coriander, bay leaf, black pepper and cloves, which appeared in Russia since the 11th century. Later, in the 11th and early 12th centuries, they were supplemented with ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, calamus (iry root) and saffron.
In the ancient period of Russian cuisine, liquid hot dishes also appeared, which received the general name [khlebovak. Especially widespread are such types of breads as cabbage soup, stews based on vegetable raw materials, as well as various zatiruhi, zaverihi, talkers, straws and other types of flour soups, which differed from each other only in consistency and consisted of three elements of water, flour and fat. , to which sometimes (but not always) was added, onion, garlic or parsley.
The processing of dairy products was not particularly difficult. Milk was drunk raw, but more often baked and very rarely sour. Sour milk was often seasoned with gruel and cabbage soup (whitened).
They also made sour cream and cottage cheese (according to the then terminology, cheese). The production of cream and butter remained unknown until the 14th century, and in the 14th-15th centuries these products were rarely prepared and were of poor quality at first. Due to imperfect methods of churning, cleaning and storage, oil quickly goes rancid.
The national sweet table consisted of berry-flour and berry-honey or honey-flour products. These are gingerbread and various types of unbaked, raw, but folded in a special way dough (Kaluga dough, malt, kulagi), in which a delicate taste effect was achieved by long, patient and laborious processing.
In my daughter's garden, the project "How they lived in Russia" was held, and my task as a mother was to prepare a project with my daughter on the topic "How food was prepared in Russia."
I read a lot of material and together with my daughter we selected those facts that were of particular interest to her, picked up pictures.
Of course, I designed it myself in the form of a report, but I increased the font so that a six-year-old child could read the text himself.
Photos printed separately, each photo on one A4 sheet. When the daughter read the report in the kindergarten group, these photographs were posted on the board, which ensured the visibility of the material told by the daughter.
The Russian people were very hardworking, worked in the fields, grew various cereals, vegetables, berries and fruits.
From cereals(barley, buckwheat, millet, oats) prepared porridge, kissels, made flour, pies, buns, bread from flour. Grains are very nutritious, healthy, they have a lot of vitamins. The housewives prepared certain portions - as in fairy tales, the little ones had a small cup, the adults had a big one.
The most important thing for a Russian person was bread. They didn’t sit at the table without bread, they treated it very reverently with respect, it was with bread that they met guests. After all, the people made a great effort to get bread on the table, there is a Russian folk proverb “Bread is the head of everything”, and they also said “Porridge is our mother, and bread is our father”, that's how respectful they were about food.
drinking in Russia milk, loved tea, infusions and decoctions of fragrant herbs, drank berry fruit drinks, brewed kvass, compotes and drink from the bark of trees. For a beautiful color, dried carrots and beets were added to such decoctions, which were previously fried. Berries and fruits contain many useful vitamins.
Mostly they cooked food in a Russian oven:
There is a large space in the middle of the stove, which is closed with a special shutter lid, and where a fire is made. A cast-iron with food to be cooked is placed directly to the fire.
They boiled potatoes in the oven, and baked pies. Since a fire is burning in the oven, it is impossible to put a cast iron into the oven with your hands or pull out a hot cast iron from there. To do this, there is a grip - a long stick with a metal slingshot at the end. For each size of the cast-iron there was a grip.
This is how they put it in the oven:
For example, how cabbage soup was cooked.
They took green cabbage leaves, chopped them finely, salted them and put them under oppression for a week - under something heavy, for fermentation.
A week later, pearl barley, meat, onions, carrots were placed in a pot with cabbage leaves. The pot was placed in the oven for several hours. By the evening, a very hearty and thick dish will be ready.
Cottage cheese
Previously, cottage cheese was called cheese, and it was cooked like this: yogurt was poured into a cast iron pot and the pot was placed in a cooling oven. After a few hours, they took it out of the oven, decanted the whey and pressed down the remaining mass. This is how curd was made.
Butter
They also drank milk in Russia, cream was separated from it. Various dairy products were made from milk - sour cream, cheese, butter, kefir.
Butter was made in two ways:
1. Pour sour cream or cream into a pot and leave it in a cooling oven. Turned out melted butter.
2. They churned manually in churns - it was very difficult, because the churns were very high, and it took a long time to churn.
Kvass
To prepare it, it took only 5-7 handfuls of millet to grind in a mortar, pour warm water, take it out in a couple of days, strain through gauze - and you're done. They didn’t even add sugar, the peasants didn’t have it.
In order to preserve vegetables and mushrooms for a long winter, they were canned. They salted, fermented and soaked almost all the gifts of nature - beets, carrots, peas, pears, garlic, zucchini, eggplant ... Special oak tubs were made from wood, in which they put vegetables or fruits prepared for salting, and covered with a lid, on which they put something heavy, to create a load, heaviness on vegetables so that they "roam" and canned.
Food in Russia was simple but healthy, and children grew up strong, healthy and strong.
Girls from a very early age were brought up as future housewives: usually the mother, in the process of household or field chores, showed and explained to her daughter how and what she was doing, then trusted her to do the simpler part of the work.
At 5-6 years old, the girl's duties included:
1. Look after the chickens
2. Cleaning the house - sweeping the floor, washing benches, shaking rugs, making beds, cleaning lamps or changing candles
3. Taking care of younger brothers and sisters - this was called "nurturing"
4. Learn to spin and weave, because the peasants made all the fabric for clothes, towels, tablecloths themselves, which is why it was called homespun. Already at the age of 5-7, the girl mastered primary skills, and her father made her a personal spinning wheel or spindle - smaller than that of adults.
5. Help cook
Women in the house had a special place near the stove - "baby kut". Usually it was separated from the rest of the hut by a curtain, and men tried not to go there unless absolutely necessary. Here the hostess spent most of her time: she cooked food, maintained order in the “cupboard” (the cabinet where kitchen utensils were stored), on the shelves along the walls, where there were pots for milk, clay and wooden bowls, salt shakers, cast irons, in wooden supplies with lids and in birch bark boxes where bulk products were stored. The girls actively helped their mother in all these chores: they washed the dishes, cleaned up, and could cook simple but healthy food themselves.
peasant meal
The everyday peasant table was not very diverse. Black bread, cabbage soup, porridge and kvass - these are, perhaps, all pickles. Of course, forest gifts were a serious help - mushrooms, berries, nuts, honey. But the basis of everything has always been bread.
"The barn is the head of everything"
What kind of folk sayings, proverbs, sayings are not composed about him: "Bread is the head of everything", "Bread and water - peasant food", "Bread on the table - and the table is the throne, but not a piece of bread - and the table is a board", "Hood dinner if there is no bread."
"Bread and salt" met dear guests, invited to the table, wished well-being, welcomed the newlyweds on their wedding day. No meal was complete without bread. Cutting bread at the table was considered an honorable duty of the head of the family.
Served as bread and ritual food. Prosphora was baked from sour dough, intended for the performance of the Christian sacrament of communion. A special kind of bread - perepecha - participated in the wedding ceremony. On Easter they baked Easter cakes, on Maslenitsa they saw off the winter with pancakes, and met the spring with "larks" - gingerbread, reminiscent of the shape of birds.
The peasant could not imagine life without bread. In lean years, famine began, despite the fact that animal food was in abundance.
Bread was usually baked once a week. The matter is complex and laborious. In the evening, the hostess cooked the dough in a special wooden tub. The dough and the tub were called the same - sourdough. The tub was constantly in operation, so it was rarely washed. A lot of sarcastic jokes are connected with this. It was said that one day the cook lost the frying pan in which she usually baked pancakes. For a whole year I could not find it and found it only when I started washing the kneader.
Before putting the dough, the walls of the kneader were rubbed with salt, then it was poured with warm water. For sourdough, they threw a piece of dough left over from the previous baking, and poured flour. After mixing everything well, it was left overnight in a warm place. By morning the dough would rise, and the cook would begin to knead it. This hard work continued until the dough began to lag behind the hands and the walls of the tub. The sourdough was again placed for a while in a warm place, and then kneaded again. Finally the dough is ready! It remains to divide it into large smooth bread and put it in the oven on a wooden shovel. After some time, the hut was filled with the incomparable smell of baked bread.
How to check if the loaf is ready? The hostess took it out of the oven and tapped on the bottom. Well-baked bread rang like a tambourine. A woman who knew how to bake delicious bread was especially respected in the family.
The baked bread was stored in special wooden bread bins. They also served it on the table. They took care of these bread bins and even gave them to their daughters as a dowry.
They baked mostly black, rye bread in the village. White, wheat, kalach was a rare guest on the peasant table, it was considered a delicacy that they allowed themselves only on holidays. Therefore, if the guest could not even be "lured with a roll", the offense was serious.
In hungry, lean years, when there was not enough bread, quinoa, tree bark, ground acorns, nettles, and bran were added to flour. The words about the bitter taste of peasant bread had a direct meaning.
Not only bread was baked from flour. Russian cuisine is rich in flour dishes: pies, pancakes, pancakes, gingerbreads were always served on the festive peasant table.
Pancakes are perhaps the most popular Russian dish. Known since pagan times, they symbolized the sun. In the old days, pancakes as a ritual food were an integral part of many ceremonies - from birth (a woman in labor was fed pancake) to death (pancakes with kutya were used to commemorate the deceased). And, of course, what is Maslenitsa without pancakes. However, true Russian pancakes are not the ones that every housewife bakes today from wheat flour. In the old days, pancakes were baked only from buckwheat flour.
They were more loose, lush, with a sour taste.
Not a single peasant holiday in Russia was complete without pies. The word "pie" itself is believed to have come from the word "feast" and originally meant festive bread. Pies are still considered a decoration of the festive table: "The hut is red in the corners, and dinner - with pies." What kind of pies have not been baked by housewives since ancient times! In the seventeenth century at least 50 types of them were known: yeast, unleavened, puff - from different types of dough; hearth, baked on the hearth of the oven without oil, and spun, baked in oil. Pies were baked in different sizes and shapes: small and large, round and square, elongated and triangular, open (pies) and closed. And with what kind of filling there were no pies: meat, fish, cottage cheese, vegetables, eggs, cereals, fruits, berries, mushrooms, raisins, poppy seeds, peas. Each pie was served with a specific dish: a pie with buckwheat porridge served with fresh cabbage soup, and a pie with salted fish served with sour soup. Pie with carrots - to the ear, and with meat - to the noodles.
Gingerbread was also an indispensable decoration of the festive table. Unlike pies, they did not have a filling, but honey and spices were added to the dough - hence their name "gingerbread". Gingerbreads were made curly in shape, in the form of some animal, fish, bird. By the way, Kolobok, the character of the famous Russian fairy tale, is also a gingerbread, only spherical. Its name comes from the ancient word "kola" - a circle. At Russian weddings, when the celebration was coming to an end, small gingerbread cookies were handed out to the guests, transparently hinting that it was time to go home.
“Schi and porridge are our food”
That's what people like to say. Porridge was the simplest, most satisfying and affordable meal. A little cereal or grain, water or milk, salt to taste - that's the whole secret.
In the XVI century. at least 20 types of cereals were known - how many cereals, so many cereals. Yes, and different types of grinding cereals made it possible to cook a special porridge. In ancient Russia, porridge was any stew cooked from chopped foods, including fish, vegetables, and peas.
As well as without pancakes, not a single rite could do without porridge. They cooked it for a wedding, for christening, for a wake. According to custom, the young were fed porridge after the wedding night. This tradition was followed even by kings. The wedding feast in Russia was called “porridge”. The preparation for this celebration was very troublesome, and therefore they said about the young: "they made a mess." If the wedding was upset, then the guilty were condemned: "you can’t cook porridge with them."
A variety of porridge is a funeral kutya, mentioned in the Tale of Bygone Years. In ancient times, it was prepared from grains of wheat and honey.
Many old peasant porridges - buckwheat, millet, oatmeal - are still on our table to this day. But many people know about spelled only from Pushkin's fairy tale about the worker Balda, whom the greedy priest fed with spelled. That was the name of the cereal plant - something between wheat and barley. Spelled porridge, although nutritious, is coarse in taste, and therefore was the food of the poor. Pushkin gave his priest the nickname "oatmeal forehead." Oatmeal was a special preparation of oatmeal, from which porridge was also cooked.
Some researchers consider porridge to be the mother of bread. According to legend, an ancient cook, while preparing porridge, shifted grains beyond measure and received a bread cake as a result.
Shchi is another native Russian food. True, in the old days almost all stews were called shchi, and not just modern soup with cabbage. The ability to cook delicious cabbage soup, as well as to bake bread, was an indispensable quality of a good housewife. "Not the hostess who speaks beautifully, but the one who cooks soup well"! In the XVI century. one could taste "shti cabbage", "shti borscht", "shti repyany".
Since then, a lot has changed in the diet. Previously unknown potatoes, tomatoes, firmly settled on our table. Many vegetables, on the contrary, have almost disappeared: for example, turnips. But in ancient times it was as common as cabbage. Turnip stew did not leave the peasant table, and before the advent of potatoes, turnip stew was considered "second bread" in Russia. They even made kvass from turnips.
Traditional Russian cabbage soup was cooked from fresh or sauerkraut in meat broth. In the spring, instead of cabbage, the hostess seasoned cabbage soup with young nettles or sorrel.
The famous French novelist Alexandre Dumas admired Russian cabbage soup. He returned from Russia with their recipe and included it in his cookbook. By the way, cabbage soup itself could have been taken to Paris from Russia. Russian memoirist of the 18th century. Andrey Bolotov tells how in winter travelers took a whole tub of frozen cabbage soup with them on a long journey. At post stations, they were warmed up and eaten as needed. So, perhaps, Mr. Khlestakov did not lie so much, talking about "soup in a saucepan ... straight from Paris."
Far from always, peasant cabbage soup was with meat. They said about such people: "Chip at least whip with a whip." But the presence of meat in cabbage soup was determined not only by the wealth of the family. Religious traditions mattered a lot. All days of the year were divided into modest, when you could eat everything, and lean - without meat and dairy products. Wednesdays and Fridays were fast throughout the year. In addition, long, from two to eight weeks, fasts were observed: Veliky, Petrov, Uspensky, and others. There were about two hundred fast days in a year.
Talking about peasant food, one cannot help but recall once again the Russian stove. Anyone who has tried bread, porridge or cabbage soup cooked in it at least once in their life will not forget their amazing taste and aroma. The secret is that the heat in the oven is distributed evenly, and the temperature remains constant for a long time. Dishes with food do not come into contact with fire. In round pot-bellied pots, the contents warm up from all sides without burning.
Casanova drink
The favorite drink in Russia was kvass. But its value was not limited to taste. Kvass and sauerkraut were the only remedies for scurvy during the long Russian winters, when food was extremely scarce. Even in ancient times, kvass was credited with medicinal properties.
Each housewife had her own recipe for making various kvass: honey, pear, cherry, cranberry, apple - you can’t list them all. Other good kvass competed with some "drunk" drinks - beer, for example. Famous adventurer of the 18th century. Casanova, who traveled half the world, visited Russia and spoke enthusiastically about the taste of kvass.
"Eat cabbage soup with meat, but not - so bread with kvass," advised a Russian proverb. Kvass was available to anyone. Many dishes were prepared on its basis - okroshka, botvinya, beetroot, tyuryu). Botvinya, for example, well known in Pushkin's time, is almost forgotten today. It was made from kvass and boiled tops of some plants - beets, for example, hence the name - "botvinya". Tyurya was considered the food of the poor - pieces of bread in kvass were sometimes their main meal.
Kissel is the same ancient drink as kvass. In the "Tale of Bygone Years" there is an interesting entry about jelly. In 997, the Pechenegs besieged Belgorod. The siege dragged on, and famine began in the city. The besieged were already ready to surrender to the mercy of the enemy, but one wise old man advised them how to escape. The townspeople gathered handfuls of all their remaining oats, wheat, and bran. They made a talker out of them, from which jelly is boiled, poured it into a tub and put it in a well. A tub of honey was placed in another well. The Pecheneg ambassadors were invited to negotiations and were treated to jelly and honey from wells. Then the Pechenegs realized that it was pointless to continue the siege, and removed it.
Beer was also a common drink in Russia. A detailed recipe for its preparation can be found, for example, in Domostroy. At the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. beer was even part of the feudal requisitions.
Peasant table customs
It is difficult to say exactly how many times a day peasants ate in the 16th or 17th century. The "Domostroy" refers to two obligatory meals - lunch and dinner. They did not always have breakfast: the people believed that the day's food must first be earned. In any case, there was no common breakfast for all family members. They got up at different times and immediately set to work, perhaps intercepting something from the remnants of yesterday's food. The whole family gathered at the dinner table at noon.
The peasant knew the price of a piece of bread from childhood, so he treated food sacredly. A meal in a peasant family was reminiscent of a sacred ceremony. The first to sit at the table, in the red corner under the images, the father is the head of the family. Other members of the family also had strictly established places depending on age and gender.
Before eating, they always washed their hands, and the meal began with a short prayer of thanksgiving, which was said by the owner of the house. Before each meal, there was a spoon and a piece of bread on the table, which in some way replaced a plate. The food was served by the hostess - the mother of the family or the daughter-in-law. In a large family, the hostess had no time to sit down at the table during dinner, and she ate alone when everyone was fed. There was even a belief that if a cook stands at the stove hungry, dinner will be tastier.
Liquid food from a large wooden bowl, one for all, each scooped with his own spoon. The owner of the house vigilantly followed the observance of the rules of behavior at the table. It was supposed to eat slowly, without overtaking each other. It was impossible to eat "in a sip", that is, to scoop up the stew twice without biting off the bread. Thickness, pieces of meat and fat at the bottom of the bowl were divided after the liquid was eaten, and the right to choose the first piece belonged to the head of the family. It was not supposed to take two pieces of meat with a spoon at once. If one of the family members absent-mindedly or deliberately violated these rules, then as a punishment he immediately received on the forehead with the master's spoon. In addition, at the table it was forbidden to talk loudly, laugh, bang a spoon on the dishes, throw leftover food on the floor, get up without finishing the meal.
The family did not always gather to dine at the house. In a bad time, they ate right in the field, so as not to waste precious time.
On holidays in the villages, "brotherhoods" were often arranged - feasts pooled. They chose the organizer of the brotherhood - the headman. He collected their share from the participants in the feast, and sometimes performed the role of toastmaster at the table. The whole world brewed beer, cooked food, set the table. There was a custom at brotherhoods: those who gathered passed around a bowl of beer or honey - a brother. Each drank a sip and passed it to a neighbor. Those who gathered had fun: they sang, danced, arranged games.
Hospitality has always been a characteristic feature of Russians. It was evaluated primarily by hospitality. The guest was supposed to drink and feed to the fullest. “Everything that is in the oven, put swords on the table,” teaches a Russian proverb. The custom dictated almost by force to feed and water the guest, even if he was already full. The hosts knelt down and tearfully begged for food and a little more drink.
Peasants ate their fill only on holidays. Low productivity, frequent shortages, heavy feudal duties forced them to deny themselves the most necessary thing - food. Perhaps this explains the national trait of Russians - love for a magnificent feast, which has always surprised foreigners.
The culinary traditions of the Russian people are rooted in antiquity. Even in pre-Christian Russia, when Maslenitsa was celebrated and bloodless sacrifices were made to the gods, such once ritual dishes as porridge, pancakes, spring larks and others were known. The Slavs were engaged in arable farming, growing rye, barley, wheat, oats, and millet. In the 10th century, according to travelers, the Slavs "sow millet most of all." During the harvest, they take millet grains in a ladle, raise them to the sky and say: “Lord, you who have given us food until now, give us it and now in abundance.”
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A little later, a ritual porridge appears - kutya. It was prepared from cereals with the addition of honey. The Slavs cooked ordinary porridge from flour, for which they ground the grains, in water or in milk. Bread was baked from flour - first unleavened cakes, and then kalachi and pies cooked with honey.
In Russia, they were also engaged in the cultivation of garden crops. The most popular were cabbage, cucumbers, turnips, swedes and radishes.
Ancient chronicles that told about the fate of the state, wars and disasters, however, sometimes mentioned facts, one way or another related to food and nutrition.
Year 907 - in the annals, wine, bread, meat, fish and vegetables are named among the monthly tax (in those days fruits were also called vegetables).
Year 969 - Prince Svyatoslav says that the city of Pereyaslavl is conveniently located - "various vegetables" from Greece and honey from Russia converge there. Already at that time, the table of Russian princes and rich people was decorated with salted lemons, raisins, walnuts and other gifts from Eastern countries, and honey was not only an everyday food product, but also an object of foreign trade.
Year 971 - during the famine, the high cost was such that a horse's head cost half a hryvnia. It is interesting that the chronicler does not speak about beef, not about pork, but about horse meat. Although the case takes place during the forced wintering of the troops of Prince Svyatoslav on the way from Greece, the fact is still remarkable. This means that there was no ban on eating horse meat in Russia, but they used it, probably, in exceptional cases. This is also evidenced by the relatively small proportion of horse bones in kitchen waste found by archaeologists.
Usually, to characterize, as we would now say "price index", the cost of products of daily demand is indicated. So, another chronicler reports that in the lean year of 1215 in Novgorod "there was a cartload of turnips for two hryvnias."
Year 996 - a feast is described, at which there was a lot of meat from cattle and animals, and bread, meat, fish, vegetables, honey and kvass were taken around the city and distributed to the people. The squad grumbled that she had to eat with wooden spoons, and Prince Vladimir ordered to give them silver ones.
Year 997 - the prince ordered to collect a handful of oats, or wheat, or bran, and ordered the wives to make "cezh" and cook jelly.
So, bit by bit, you can collect in our chronicles a lot of interesting information about nutrition in the 10th-11th centuries. Describing the simplicity of the manners of Prince Svyatoslav (964), the chronicler says that the prince did not take wagons with him on campaigns and did not cook meat, but thinly sliced horse meat, beef or beast, ate them, baked on coals.
Charcoal roasting is the oldest method of heat treatment, characteristic of all peoples, and it was not borrowed by the Russians from the peoples of the Caucasus and the East, but was used from ancient times. In historical literary monuments of the 15th-16th centuries, chickens, geese, and hares are often referred to as "twisted", that is, on a spit. But still, the usual, most common way of preparing meat dishes was boiling and frying in large pieces in Russian ovens.
For a long time, cooking was a purely family affair. They were in charge, as a rule, of the oldest woman in the family. Professional cooks first appeared at the princely courts, and then in the monastery refectories.
Cooking in Russia stood out as a specialty only in the 11th century, although the mention of professional chefs is found in chronicles as early as the 10th century.
The Laurentian Chronicle (1074) says that in the Kiev Caves Monastery there was a whole kitchen with a large staff of monks-cooks. Prince Gleb had an "elder cook" named Torchin, the first Russian cook known to us.
The monastic cooks were very skillful. Prince Izyaslav, who visited the borders of the Russian land, who had seen a lot, especially loved the "meals" of the Pechersk monks. There is even a description of the work of cooks of that era:
“And put on the sackcloth and sackcloth of the retinue of the votolyan, and began to create ugliness, and began to help the cooks, cooking for the brothers ... And after matins, you went to the cookhouse, and prepared fire, water, firewood, and I’ll come and take the other cook to take away.”
During the time of Kievan Rus, cooks were in the service of princely courts and rich houses. Some of them even had several chefs. This is evidenced by the description of one of the rich man's houses of the 12th century, which mentions a lot of "sokachi", i.e. cooks, "working and doing with darkness" .
Russian chefs sacredly kept the traditions of folk cuisine, which served as the basis of their professional skills, as evidenced by the oldest written monuments - "Domostroy" (XVI century), "Painting for the royal dishes" (1611-1613), table books of Patriarch Filaret and boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov, monastic account books, etc. They often mention folk dishes - cabbage soup, fish soup, cereals, pies, pancakes, kulebyaki, pies, kissels, kvass, honey and others.
The nature of the preparation of Russian cuisine dishes is largely due to the peculiarities of the Russian stove, which for centuries faithfully served as a hearth for ordinary city people, noble boyars, and townspeople. It is impossible to imagine Ancient Russia both without log huts and without the famous Russian stove.
The Russian stove, with its mouth, was always turned towards the doors, so that the smoke could exit the hut through the open doors into the vestibule in the shortest way. The stoves in the chicken huts were large; several dishes could be cooked in them at the same time. Despite the fact that the food sometimes gave off a little smoke, the Russian oven had its advantages: the dishes cooked in it had a unique taste.
The peculiarities of the Russian stove determine such features of our cuisine as cooking dishes in pots and cast iron, frying fish and poultry in large pieces, an abundance of stews and baked dishes, a wide range of baked goods - pies, krupeniks, pies, kulebyak, etc.
Since the 16th century, we can talk about the differences in the cuisine of the monastery, rural and royal. Vegetables, herbs, herbs and fruits played the main role in the monastery. They formed the basis of the diet of the monks, especially during fasting. Rural cuisine was less rich and varied, but also refined in its own way: at least 15 dishes were supposed to be served at a festive dinner. Lunch is generally the main meal in Russia. In the old days, in more or less wealthy houses, on a long table of strong oak boards, covered with an embroidered tablecloth, four dishes were served in turn: a cold appetizer, soup, the second - usually meat in non-fasting times - and pies or pies, which were eaten "for dessert ".
Starters were very different, but the main among them were all sorts of salads - a mixture of finely chopped vegetables, usually boiled, to which you could add anything - from an apple to cold veal. From them came, in particular, a vinaigrette known to every Russian home. By the end of the 17th century, jelly became popular (from the word “chilled”, that is, cold: firstly, jelly must be cold, otherwise it will spread on a plate; secondly, they usually ate it in winter, from Christmas to Epiphany, that is, in coldest time of the year). At the same time, fish soup made from various fish, corned beef and sausages appeared. Pickle amazed foreigners with its refined taste. Shchi - remember the proverb: "Schi and porridge is our food" - so, shchi was served with mushrooms, with fish, with pies.
Of the drinks, the most popular were berry and fruit juices with fruit drinks, as well as tinctures. Medovukha - a drink based on bee honey - was stronger, and then vodka appeared. But bread kvass has been the main Russian drink since ancient times. With what they didn’t do it - from raisins to mint!
But at the feasts of the boyars, a huge number of dishes began to appear, reaching up to fifty. At the royal table, 150-200 were served. Lunches lasted 6-8 hours in a row and included almost a dozen courses, each of which in turn consists of two dozen dishes of the same name: a dozen varieties of fried game, salted fish, a dozen varieties of pancakes and pies.
Dishes were prepared from a whole animal or plant, all kinds of grinding, grinding and crushing of food were used only in fillings for pies. Yes, and very moderately. Fish for pies, for example, were not crushed, but plastified.
At feasts, it was customary to drink honey before the feast, as an appetite stimulant, and after it, at the conclusion of feasts. Food was washed down with kvass and beer. This happened until the 15th century. In the 15th century, “bread wine”, i.e. vodka, appeared in Russia.
In the 17th century, the order of serving dishes began to change (this applies to a rich festive table). Now it consisted of 6-8 changes and only one dish was served in each change:
- hot (soup, stew, fish soup);
- cold (okroshka, botvinya, jelly, jellied fish, corned beef);
- roast (meat, poultry);
- body (boiled or fried hot fish);
- unsweetened pies, kulebyaka;
- porridge (sometimes it was served with cabbage soup);
- cake (sweet pies, pies);
- snacks.
As for drinks, for example, the register of those released from Sytny Dvor to receive Polish ambassadors read: Sovereign: 1 submission: Romanes, Bastra, Rensky, for purchase; 2nd serving: malmazei, muskatel, alkane, for purchase w; 3 serving: kiparei, French wine, church wine, for purchase; red honey: 1 serving: cherry, raspberry, currant, ladle each; 2 serving: 2 buckets of raspberry honey, a bucket of boyar honey; 3 serving: 2 buckets of juniper honey, a bucket of wild cherry honey; white honey: 1 serving: 2 buckets of molasses honey with nails, a bucket of bucket honey; 2 serving: 2 ladles of honey with a musket, a ladle of bucket honey; 3 serving: 2 buckets of honey with cardamom, a bucket of bucket honey. In total about the Great Sovereign: Romanes, Bastra, Rhenskago, Malmazei, Mushkatel, Alkane, Kinarev, French wine, Church wine, 6 mugs each, and 6 glasses of vodka; red honey: cherry, raspberry, currant, bone, wild cherry, juniper, scalded, ladle each; white honey: bucket with cloves, with musket, with cardamom, 8 mugs each, 9 mugs of sugar. About the boyars, and about the roundabout, and about the thoughtful people, and about the ambassadors, and about the royal nobles: 2 mugs of aniseed vodka from romanea, cinnamon also, 8 mugs of boyar vodka, 5 buckets of romanea boyar, also, 5 buckets of bastra, 2 buckets of rensky, 5 buckets of alkane, 4 buckets of fryazhsky wine, 3 buckets of church wine, 8 buckets of cherry wine, 4 buckets of raspberry honey...” And this is not the end of the list.
However, despite the difference in the number of dishes for the rich and the poor, the nature of the food retained national features. The division happened later, from the time of Peter the Great.
The formation of Russian cuisine was also influenced by cultural exchange with neighboring peoples. Immediately, as soon as after the baptism, Slavic writing came to Russia from Bulgaria, books began to be translated and copied, and not only liturgical ones. At this time, the Russian reader little by little gets acquainted with literary works, historical chronicles, works of natural science, collections of sayings. In a very short historical period - during the time of Vladimir and especially his son Yaroslav - Russia joins the culture of Bulgaria and Byzantium, Russian people actively assimilate the heritage of ancient Greece, Rome and the Ancient East. Along with the development of spiritual and cultural life in Russia, the introduction of church canons significantly changed the nature of nutrition. Spices and seasonings came into use: black and allspice, cloves and ginger, overseas fruits - lemons, new vegetables - zucchini, sweet peppers, etc., new cereals - Saracen millet (rice) and buckwheat.
Russian “cooks” borrowed many secrets from the Tsargrad masters who arrived in Muscovy - “skillful men, highly experienced not only in painting icons, but also in kitchen art.” Acquaintance with Greek-Byzantine cuisine turned out to be very useful for our cuisine.
No less strong was the influence on Russian cuisine and our eastern neighbors - India. China, Persia. The first Russian people who visited these countries brought many new impressions from there. Russians learned a lot from Athanasius Nikitin's famous book "Journey Beyond Three Seas" (1466-1472), which contains a description of foods unfamiliar in Russia - dates, ginger, coconut, pepper, cinnamon. And the book of Vasily Gagara (written in 1634-1637) expanded the horizons of our compatriots. They learned about the products used by the inhabitants of the Caucasus and the Middle East. Here are his observations on how sugar was produced in the East: “Yes, in the same Egypt reeds will be born, and sugar is made from it. And they dig reeds near the sea ... and when the reeds ripen, and eat them like there is honeycomb.
But our ancestors mastered not only the practical methods of cooking. They also thought about the essence of the phenomena occurring at the same time. A long time ago they mastered the secrets of making yeast dough, which is mentioned in the chronicles: the monks of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra knew how to cook custard bread that did not stale for a long time.
Already in the XI-XII centuries. Russians knew many rather complicated methods of preparing kvass, medkov, and hops. They can be found in the famous ancient Russian herbalists, as well as in various "lives". So, kvass was widely known - wheat, honey, apple, ash, etc. Our ancestors were well versed not only in the intricacies of preparing various types of kvass, but also in the mechanism of action of sourdough, yeast, as evidenced by the numerous instructions of the ancients:
“The wheat is crushed and grinded, and the flour is sowed, and the dough is kneaded and sour.” Or: “And kvass for them to sour with sour thickening, and not with yeast.” "Kvass separates the mating and pasting of the dough and makes the bread liquid and buhon."
And other literary sources confirm the knowledge of Russian people in the field of food. So, in the "Book, the verb is a cool heliport" (XVII century) contains numerous discussions about the difference, for example, cow's milk from goat's, rabbit's meat from bear's, etc. It is curious that even then Russian people had an idea about the antiseptic properties of protein : “Egg white is put into medicine ... for sores and for all sorts of subcutaneous wounds. It also helps protein to oprelin, soak it in hot water and apply it ”(section“ about chicken eggs ”).
For a general idea of nutrition in ancient times in Russia, here are a few culinary recipes for dishes that were popular at that time.
Turnip stuffed. Turnips are washed, boiled in water until soft, cooled, the skin is scraped off, the core is cut out. The taken out pulp is finely chopped, minced meat is added and turnips are filled with this stuffing. Sprinkle grated cheese on top, drizzle with butter and bake.
Oatmeal jelly. Pour the cereal with warm water and leave for a day in a warm place. Then strain and squeeze. Add salt, sugar to the resulting liquid and boil, stirring constantly, until thickened. Add milk to hot jelly, mix, pour into buttered bowls, put in the cold. When the jelly hardens, cut it into portions and serve with cold boiled milk or yogurt.
"Pea block". Peas are completely boiled and crushed, the resulting puree is seasoned with salt and molded (you can use molds, cups, etc., oiled). The formed pea puree is spread on a plate and poured with sunflower oil with fried onions, sprinkled with herbs.
Peasant bread soup. Fry small dry crusts of white bread in fat with finely chopped parsley and finely chopped onions, then pour water, salt, pepper and bring to a boil. Whisking constantly, pour the beaten eggs into the soup in a thin stream. This soup, which tastes like meat, should be served immediately.
Sbiten-zhzhenka. To get burnt, sugar in a spoon is heated over low heat until a dark brown syrup forms. Dissolve honey in 4 cups of water and boil for 20-25 minutes, then add spices and boil for another 5 minutes. Strain the resulting mixture through cheesecloth and add zhzhenka for color. Serve hot.
"Monastery chicken". Chop the head of cabbage not very finely, put in a clay pot, pour eggs beaten with milk, salt, cover with a frying pan and put in the oven. Cabbage is considered ready when it acquires a beige color.
