Pokhlebkin cook. William Pokhlebkin: biography, photos and interesting facts

GREAT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CULINARY ARTS.

ALL RECIPES V.V. POKHLEBKINA

You are holding a unique book in your hands. She will become an indispensable adviser for anyone who wants to enrich their table with the most popular dishes, as well as learn how to cook not only according to the usual and boring recipes, but with the knowledge of cooking and even creatively.

The author of this wonderful book, William Vasilyevich Pokhlebkin, is no longer with us - he tragically died in March 2000. The murder of the writer was a real shock for the whole of Russia - after all, it is difficult to find a person who would not have heard about Pokhlebkin's wonderful culinary recipes or did not use his wise advice. Now gourmets have only his cookbooks left. This edition is an invaluable gift from the Master to admirers of his talent, because it contains all of his theoretical and practical culinary works.

Not everyone knows that V.V. Pokhlebkin is an international historian by profession and education, a specialist in the foreign policy of the countries of Central and Northern Europe. In 1949 he graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 1956-1961 he was the editor-in-chief of the international periodical Scandinavian Collection (Tartu, Estonia), since 1962 he collaborated with the Scandinavian magazine (London, Norwich), and in 1957-1967 For many years he worked as a senior lecturer at MGIMO and the Higher Diplomatic School of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the historical and philological faculties of Moscow State University.

It would seem that history and cooking are incompatible things. However, a talented person is always talented in many ways, in any case, the colossal experience of Pokhlebkin as an international specialist formed the basis of his famous books on the national cuisines of the world.

Over the past three decades, V.V. Pokhlebkin remained an unsurpassed specialist in the theory, history and practice of culinary arts.

The book "Secrets of Good Cuisine", which opens our edition, was first published in 1979, in the "Eureka" series. This is a popular presentation of the main issues of culinary practice, where the technologies of all existing culinary processes, their significance and role in cooking are described in an accessible language for non-professionals. She introduces the reader to the world of culinary art, talking in a popular way about the meaning and features of the culinary craft.

The book immediately became an unusual phenomenon, as readers were already disillusioned with cookbooks that included descriptions of standard boring tricks and recipes. "Secrets of a good kitchen" turned the hackneyed idea of cooking as an exclusively female occupation that does not require precise knowledge of theory. The book opens up the prospect for any literate person to learn how to work professionally, of course, with an interested and conscientious attitude to cook's work.

The book still enjoys unprecedented popularity, and not only in Russia. It has been translated into the national languages of the republics, where they traditionally attached great importance to the preparation of delicious food and its quality. In 1982 it was published in Riga in Latvian, twice (1982 and 1987) it was published in Vilnius in Lithuanian, in 1990 in Moldavian in Chisinau. In total, this work has withstood thirteen editions in twenty years.

"Entertaining Cooking", continuing the "Secrets of Good Cooking", was released a little later, in 1983. Here, special attention is paid to the more prosaic, but extremely important handicraft side of cooking. The book tells about the types of hearths (stoves, heating appliances), about the impact of different types of fire on the taste of food, about kitchen utensils and tools. "Entertaining Cooking" was also translated into Lithuanian, a total of six editions.

The books “Spices, flavors and food colors” and “All about spices and seasonings”, as the author believed, will help make our culinary world bright and colorful, full of taste and aroma. Note that the work of V.V. Pokhlebkin about spices gained international fame and was published five times in Leipzig in German.

The book “National Cuisines of Our Peoples” became just as popular, which included recipes for national dishes of the peoples of Russia and the Near Abroad, indicating the original, historically established technologies for their preparation. It gives a fairly complete picture of the culinary skills of nations, ethnic groups that have their own, pronounced national cuisine.

This research work was carried out for ten years both in the archives and in the field, in various regions. Perhaps that is why it aroused such serious interest among professional cooks in many foreign countries and was highly appreciated by them as a practical cookbook. On the initiative of the author's foreign colleagues, the book was translated into Finnish, English, German, Croatian, Portuguese and Hungarian.

The sequel is the book "On Foreign Cuisines", which includes basic recipes for Chinese, Scottish and Finnish cuisine. The ethnographic approach taken by the author to the culinary heritage of nations helped to restore, restore the overall picture of culinary creativity, freeing it from unnecessary layers, and individual dishes from restaurant distortions allowed by ignorance or ignorance.

No less interesting is the continuation of "My Kitchen" - "My Menu". Here V.V. Pokhlebkin shares his own cooking secrets. The book consists of a commented list of those dishes of world cuisine that the author especially loved and prepared for himself personally only at special, solemn moments.

The collection ends with Pokhlebkin's famous "Culinary Dictionary", written in the late 80s. This book is designed to answer all the current questions of both a professional and an amateur, including a range of international (French, Latin, Greek, German, Chinese and others) terms, concepts, dishes and methods of their preparation that have developed over the entire rich thousand-year history of world culinary practice. The dictionary creates a complete picture of the world culinary art, where Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar and other national dishes that are familiar to us occupy a worthy place. "Dictionary" gives a brief description of all the terms and products mentioned (and not mentioned) in the book and greatly facilitates the use of the publication.

William Pokhlebkin became famous not only as a scientist and specialist in international relations, but also as a culinary researcher. William Pokhlebkin became the most famous gastronomic historian in Russia. He wrote more than one cookbook; according to his recipes of Russian cuisine, people still learn how to cook. Woman's Day has collected the most famous dishes of William Pokhlebkin.

Shchi rich (full): recipe

Ingredients:

750 g of beef, 500-750 g or 1 half-liter can of sauerkraut, 4-5 dry porcini mushrooms, 0.5 cups of salted mushrooms, 1 carrot, 1 large potato, 1 turnip, 2 onions, 1 celery root and greens, 1 root and parsley, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of dill, 3 bay leaves, 4-5 cloves of garlic, 1 tbsp. l. butter or ghee, 1 tbsp. l. cream, 100 g sour cream, 8 black peppercorns, 1 tsp. marjoram or dry angelica (dawn).

Put the beef together with the onion and half of the roots (carrots, parsley, celery) in cold water and boil for 2 hours. After 1–1.5 hours after the start of cooking, salt, then strain the broth, discard the roots.

Put sauerkraut in a clay pot, pour 0.5 liters of boiling water, add butter, close, put in a moderately heated oven. When the cabbage begins to soften, remove it and combine with strained broth and beef.

Mushrooms and a potato cut into four parts put in an enameled saucepan, pour 2 cups of cold water and put on fire. When the water boils, remove the mushrooms, cut into strips and lower into the mushroom broth to cook. After the mushrooms and potatoes are ready, combine with the meat broth.

To the combined broths and cabbage, add finely chopped onion, all other roots, cut into strips, and spices (except garlic and dill), salt and cook for 20 minutes. Then remove from heat, season with dill and garlic and let it brew for about 15 minutes, wrapped in something warm. Before serving, season with coarsely chopped salted mushrooms and sour cream directly in the plates.

Studen: recipe

Ingredients:

1 head (veal or pork), 4 legs (veal or pork), 1 carrot, 1 parsley (root), 5 Jamaican (allspice) peppercorns, 10 black peppercorns, 5 bay leaves, 1-2 onions, 1 head garlic , for 1 kg of meat - 1 liter of water.

Singe the legs and head, clean, cut into equal pieces, pour water and cook for 6 to 8 hours on very low heat, without boiling, so that the volume of water is reduced by half. 1–1.5 hours before the end of cooking, add onions, carrots, parsley, 20 minutes before cooking. - pepper, bay leaf; salt a little. Then take out the meat, separate from the bones, cut into small pieces, transfer to a separate bowl, mix with finely chopped garlic and a small amount of ground black pepper. Boil the broth with the remaining bones for another half an hour or an hour (so that its volume does not exceed 1 liter), add salt, strain and pour over the boiled prepared meat. Get cold for 3-4 hours.

Gelatin is not used, since young meat (veal, pig, pork) contains a sufficient amount of sticky substances.

Serve the jelly with horseradish, mustard, crushed garlic and sour cream.

Roast: recipe

Ingredients:

2-2.5 kg plump beef (thick edge), 1 carrot, 2 onions, 1 parsley or celery, 6-8 black peppercorns, 3-4 bay leaves, 2 tsp. ginger, 0.5 cups of sour cream, 1 tsp. salt, 1-1.5 cups of kvass.

Wash the beef, remove films, bones, cut off the fat from it, cut it into small pieces, put it on a preheated frying pan or baking sheet, melt, calcine, fry the whole piece of beef in it so that it becomes covered with a crust, sprinkling with finely chopped carrots, onions, parsley and crushed spices, then place in the oven, water every 10 minutes. little by little kvass, turning all the time. Fry for about 1–1.5 hours. For 5–7 minutes. until the end of frying, collect all the juice in a cup, add 0.25 cups of cold boiled water to it, refrigerate. When the juice has cooled, remove the layer of fat from the surface, heat the juice, strain, add sour cream. Serve as a dipping sauce. Remove the cooked beef from the oven, salt, let it cool slightly (15 minutes), then cut across the fibers into pieces, pour over hot meat juice and serve.

Roasts are not served cold or reheated. Garnish can be fried potatoes, boiled or stewed carrots, turnips, rutabaga, fried or stewed mushrooms.

Pike in sour cream: recipe

Ingredients:

1–1.5 kg pike, 1–2 tbsp. l. sunflower oil, 300–450 g sour cream, 1–2 tsp. ground black pepper, 1 lemon (juice and zest), 1 pinch of nutmeg.

Fish with a specific odor (for example, pike, some types of sea fish) require special processing and preparation methods.

Peel the pike, rub it with pepper inside and out, pour over with oil and put the whole in a deep frying pan on a ceramic stand (you can use a saucer) and open it in the oven for 7-10 minutes so that the fish is browned. Then transfer to a tighter bowl, pour sour cream, half covering the pike with it, close the lid and put in the oven on low heat for 45–60 minutes. Put the finished fish on a dish, pour over lemon juice, and heat the resulting gravy on the stove until thickened, salt, season with grated nutmeg and zest and serve separately to the fish in a gravy boat or pour over the fish with it.

Fried mushrooms: recipe

Ingredients:

4 cups peeled mushrooms (various), 100–150 g sunflower oil, 2 onions, 1 tbsp. l. dill, 2 tbsp. l. parsley, 0.5 cup sour cream, 0.5 tsp. ground black pepper.

Peel the mushrooms, rinse, cut into strips, put in a preheated dry frying pan, cover with a lid and fry over medium heat until the juice released by the mushrooms boils away almost completely; then salt, add finely chopped onion, add oil, mix and continue to fry over moderate heat until a brownish color is formed, about 20 minutes. After that, pepper, sprinkle with finely chopped dill and parsley, mix, fry for 2-3 minutes, add sour cream and bring it to a boil.

In the mushroom season, it is important to know how to cook mushrooms for future use.

Oatmeal porridge: recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups of Hercules oatmeal, 0.75 liters of water, 0.5 liters of milk, 2 tsp. salt, 3 tbsp. l. butter.

Pour the grits with water and cook over low heat until the water boils and thickens completely, then add hot milk in two steps and, continuing to stir, cook until thickened, season with salt. Season the finished porridge with oil.

Cabbage Pie: Recipe

Yeast puff pastry

Ingredients:

600 g flour, 1.25–1.5 cups milk (1.25 for sweet pie), 125 g butter, 25–30 g yeast, 1–2 yolks (2 yolks for sweet pie), 1.5 tsp. l. salt.

In the case of using this dough for sweet pies, add to it: 1 tbsp. l. sugar 1 tsp lemon zest, star anise, cinnamon or cardamom (depending on the filling: for nut, poppy - cardamom, for apple - cinnamon, for cherry - star anise, for currant, strawberry - zest).

Knead flour, milk, yeast, yolks, salt and 25 g of butter into a dough, knead thoroughly and let rise at cool room temperature. Knead the risen dough, roll it into a layer about 1 cm thick, grease with a thin layer of butter, fold it in four, then put it for 10 minutes. to the cold. Then roll out again and brush with oil, folding the layers and repeating this operation three times, then let the dough rise in a cold place. After that, without dying, cut the dough for the pie.

Cabbage stuffing

You can prepare the filling from both fresh and stewed cabbage.

Chop fresh cabbage, salt, let stand for about 1 hour, squeeze the juice slightly, add butter and finely chopped hard-boiled eggs and immediately use for the filling.

Chop fresh cabbage, put in a saucepan under the lid, simmer over low heat until it becomes soft, then add sunflower oil, increase the heat, fry the cabbage lightly so that it remains light, add onion, parsley and black ground pepper, mix with hard-boiled chopped eggs.

Buckwheat-wheat pancakes: recipe

Ingredients:

3.5 cups of buckwheat flour, 1.5 cups of wheat flour, 2.5 cups of warm water, 2 cups of boiling milk, 25 g of yeast, 25 g of butter, 2 eggs, 1 tsp. sugar, 1 tsp salt, 0.5 cups melted butter.

Dissolve the yeast in water, add all the wheat flour and an equal volume of buckwheat flour, let it rise. Pour the remaining buckwheat flour, let it rise again. Brew the dough with hot milk, cool, put sugar, salt, butter, let it rise and then bake. Honey gingerbread

Ingredients:

400 g wheat flour, 100 g rye flour, 2 yolks, 0.75–1 glass of milk or curdled milk, 125 g sour cream, 500 g honey, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of burnt sugar, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 2 cardamom capsules, 4 cloves, 0.5 tsp. star anise, 1 tsp lemon zest, 0.5 tsp soda.

Boil honey in a saucepan over low heat until red, removing the foam, then brew part of it with rye flour and stir with the rest of the honey, cool to a slightly warm state and beat until white.

Wipe the zhzhenka with yolks, add milk and knead wheat flour on the egg-milk mixture, after mixing it and mixing it with spices ground into powder.

Combine the honey-rye mixture with sour cream and the above mixture, whisking thoroughly. Place the finished dough in a greased form (or baking sheet) with a layer of 1–2 cm and bake over low heat. Cut the finished gingerbread plate into 4x6 cm rectangles.

These gingerbread cookies are not glazed.

Preparing burnt sugar. Make a thick sugar syrup and heat it over moderate heat in a small thick-walled metal bowl, stirring all the time, until it turns yellow, then reduce the heat slightly and continue stirring until it becomes beige or light brown. At the same time, sugar should not burn, the smell should be specifically caramel, and not burnt. This is achieved by careful, continuous stirring and regulation of the fire. The resulting light brown candy is used to tint and give a "caramel" flavor to products.

In Russian folk cuisine, there are three main varieties of meat second courses:

Boiled meat in a large piece, cooked in soups and gruels, and then used as a second course or as a cold snack;

Dishes from offal (liver, omentum, abomasum), baked together with cereals in pots;

Dishes from a whole animal (poultry) or from a part of it (legs), or from a large piece of meat (rump, rump), roasted in an oven on a baking sheet, the so-called roast.

Various cutlets, meatballs, meatballs, dumplings made from ground meat, borrowed and spread only in the 19th-20th centuries, are not typical for classical Russian cuisine and therefore are not given here.

In the past, porridges and gruels were usually used as side dishes for meat dishes of the Russian table, in which meat was cooked, then either boiled, or rather steamed and baked, root vegetables (turnips, carrots), as well as mushrooms; to the roast, regardless of the meat used, in addition, pickles were also served - sauerkraut, pickled and sour apples, pickled lingonberries, boils.

In modern conditions, it is convenient to cook baked vegetables for Russian meat dishes in aluminum food foil. The role of gravy is usually played by the juice formed during frying, as well as melted sour cream and melted butter, which are poured over boiled vegetables or flavored with cereals, that is, a side dish. Sauces for meat dishes, i.e., sauces based on flour, butter, eggs and milk, are not characteristic of native Russian cuisine.

JELLY

:
1 head (veal or pork), 4 legs (veal or pork), 1 carrot, 1 parsley (root), 10 black peppercorns, 5 Jamaican (allspice) peppercorns, 5 bay leaves, 1-2 onions, 1 garlic head , for 1 kg of meat - 1 liter of water.

Singe the legs and head, clean, cut into equal pieces, pour water and cook for 6 to 8 hours on very low heat, without boiling, so that the volume of water is reduced by half. 1-1.5 hours before the end of cooking, add onions, carrots, parsley, 20 minutes - pepper, bay leaf; salt a little.
Then take out the meat, separate from the bones, cut into small pieces, transfer to a separate bowl, mix with finely chopped garlic and a small amount of ground black pepper.
Boil the broth with the remaining bones for another half an hour or an hour (so that its volume does not exceed 1 liter), add salt, strain and pour over the boiled prepared meat.
Freeze for 3-4 hours.
Gelatin is not used, since young meat (veal, pig, pork) contains a sufficient amount of sticky substances.
Serve the jelly with horseradish, mustard, crushed garlic and sour cream.

BOILED BEEF

Boiled beef in a large piece (1.5-2 kg) is boiled in gruels (Tikhvin, Kostroma) and less often in bone broths (the broth from the bones is prepared in advance and then the meat is immersed in the boiling broth).
For boiled beef, mainly the shoulder and thigh parts are used, as well as the hem, a thin edge.
The usual cooking time is 2.5 hours on moderate heat.

NANNY

:
1 lamb head, 4 lamb legs, 1 mutton abomasum, 2 cups buckwheat, 4 onions, 100 g butter or sunflower oil.

1. Boil the lamb head and legs so that the meat itself falls behind the bones. Separate the meat. Take the brain out of your head.
2. Cook steep buckwheat porridge.
3. Finely chop lamb meat together with onions, mix with porridge and butter.
4. Carefully scrape the lamb abomasum, wash it, stuff it with prepared minced meat (point 3), put brains in the middle of it, sew up the abomasum and place it in earthenware (a wide clay pot in a korchaga), which is tightly closed.
Place in a slightly heated oven for 2-3 hours.

STUFFING BOX

:
1 lamb omentum, 1 kg of lamb liver, 1.5-2 cups of buckwheat, 3 eggs, 3 onions, 5-6 dry porcini mushrooms, 1 cup of sour cream.

Soak the liver for 2 hours in water or milk, boil, chop finely, mix with steep buckwheat porridge cooked with onions and crushed dry mushrooms and knead on sour cream into a thick mass.
Fill with it the omentum, previously laid in a korchaga (wide clay pot) so that the edges of the omentum tightly cover this mass from above.
Close the pot.
Bake the omentum in the oven for 1-1.5 hours over moderate heat.

REPRINT

:
1.5 kg of lamb liver, 1 lamb omentum, 4 eggs, 1-1.5 cups of milk, 1 head of garlic, 2 onions, 10 black peppercorns.

1. Rinse the raw liver, remove the films, boil with boiling water, chop finely, and then pound with finely chopped onion, garlic and pepper.
2. Beat two full eggs and two yolks, mix with milk.
3. Combine the products indicated in paragraphs 1 and 2, pour into a lamb omentum placed in a clay pot, close the edges of the omentum on top, grease with whipped proteins and bake in an oven or oven for 2-3 hours over low heat.

Roasted piglet

:
1 suckling pig (1.5 kg), 500 g buckwheat, 50 g butter, 2 tbsp. tablespoons of sunflower or olive oil.

Pig preparation.
Wash the well-fed piglet with cold water, hold it in it for 3-4 minutes, then dip it in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, carefully pluck the bristles without damaging the skin, rub with flour, singe, then rip, gut, wash inside and out, after which it is desirable from the inside, cut out all the bones (ribs, spine), with the exception of the head and legs, in no case cutting through the meat and skin through.
Minced meat preparation.
Prepare cool buckwheat porridge, but do not flavor with anything other than butter. Before cooking, fry the grits with butter, scald with boiling water, separate the floating grains. Season the cooked porridge with salt. Add fried and chopped pig liver to it, mix.
Stuffed piglet.
Lay the porridge along the piglet evenly throughout, so as not to distort its shape, avoiding thickening in some places, at the same time it is quite tight. Then sew the pig with a harsh thread, straighten the shape, bend the legs, put it on the baking sheet sideways on birch sticks arranged crosswise so that the skin of the pig does not touch the baking sheet. You can not salt or flavor with spices.
Roasting a pig.
Coat the piglet with vegetable oil, pour melted butter on top and put in a preheated oven until browned. Then turn over and brown the other side. After that, reduce the heat and continue to fry, pouring the piglet with flowing juice every 10 minutes for 1 hour and turning it over alternately: fry the back up for 15-20 minutes.
When the piglet is ready, make a deep incision along its back so that steam comes out of the piglet and it does not sweat. In this case, the crust will remain dry and crispy. Let stand for 15 minutes, cut into pieces (or leave whole), pour over the juice remaining after frying and serve with cranberry broth.

ROAST

:
2-2.5 kg of well-fed beef (thick edge), 1 carrot, 2 onions, 1 parsley or celery, 6-8 black pepper grains, 3-4 bay leaves, 2 teaspoons of ginger, 0.5 cups of sour cream, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1-1.5 cups of kvass.

Wash the beef, remove films, bones, cut off the fat from it, cut it into small pieces, put it on a preheated frying pan or baking sheet, melt, calcine, fry the whole piece of beef in it so that it becomes covered with a crust, sprinkling with finely chopped carrots, onions, parsley and crushed spices, then place in the oven, pour a little kvass every 10 minutes, turning all the time.
Fry for about 1-1.5 hours.
5-7 minutes before the end of frying, collect all the juice in a cup, add 0.25 cups of cold boiled water to it, put in the refrigerator.
When the juice has cooled, remove the layer of fat from the surface, and heat the meat juice, strain, add sour cream. Serve as a dipping sauce.
Remove the cooked beef from the oven, salt, let it cool slightly (15 minutes), then cut across the fibers into pieces, pour over hot meat juice and serve.
Roasts are not served cold or reheated.
Garnish can be fried potatoes, boiled or stewed carrots, turnips, rutabaga, fried or stewed mushrooms.

Explosions have a plant base - vegetable or berry. Additional components in them are often vinegar and honey.
The most traditional broths are onion, cabbage, cranberry.

Current page: 1 (the book has 157 pages in total)

GREAT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CULINARY ARTS.
ALL RECIPES V.V. POKHLEBKINA

FROM THE PUBLISHING HOUSE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of this wonderful book, William Vasilyevich Pokhlebkin, is no longer with us - he tragically died in March 2000. The murder of the writer was a real shock for the whole of Russia - after all, it is difficult to find a person who would not have heard about Pokhlebkin's wonderful culinary recipes or did not use his wise advice. Now gourmets have only his cookbooks left. This publication is an invaluable gift from the Master to admirers of his talent, because it contains all of his theoretical and practical culinary works.

Over the past three decades, V.V. Pokhlebkin remained an unsurpassed specialist in the theory, history and practice of culinary arts.

Collection of works by V.V. Pokhlebkina on culinary skills combines both purely practical material for studying culinary arts, as well as various information on the history of culinary business in Russia and other countries (Finland, Scotland, the Scandinavian countries, China), so the publication is of interest to the widest range of readers - from experienced chefs to young housewives.

William Vasilyevich himself said that the purpose of his books is to help "acquire the skills to create such food, such food, without which our life would be boring, joyless, uninspired and at the same time devoid of something of our own, individual." Good luck to you!

SECRETS OF GOOD CUISINE

Chapter 1

Why do so many young people have no desire to cook food: not at work (being a cook), not at home, for themselves? The reasons put forward are different, but they all essentially come down to one thing - to the unwillingness to do something that, in fact, you have no idea about. For one, the kitchen is a very unprestigious occupation, for another it is too prosaic, for a third it is tedious and difficult, for a fourth it is a waste of time, for a fifth it is trifling, which has nothing to learn. But none of these five really knows what the art and mystery of cooking is, what laws govern cooking and what a real cook should be.

When recruiting for a geographical expedition, young people were asked the question: do you know how to cook on your own? Many answered in the affirmative. And when they were asked to clarify what they can do, it turned out: boil water, boil vermicelli, fry sausages, heat canned food, cook soup from concentrates. And the most amazing thing is that none of them joked. They sincerely believed that this was the ability to cook. In confirmation, they referred to the fact that at home, in normal, non-camping conditions, they cook exclusively from ... ready-made semi-finished products. And from what else? This, of course, does not require any knowledge, much less talent. But the results of such preparation are mediocre and tasteless.

Meanwhile, to engage in truly haute cuisine, as well as for any real business, and even more so for real art, you need a vocation, talent, and at least talent.

True, our daily experience seems to dissuade us from this. Some will even chuckle when they read that for a cook you must be talented. Quite often we see how the chefs of ordinary canteens, cafes rather deftly “sculpt” certain dishes on duty, without experiencing any “pangs of creativity” at all. The fact is that the profession of a cook has now become so massive that people sometimes go into this area without hesitation. What is there to know? He fell asleep cereals, poured water - and cook porridge, just make sure that it does not burn. That's all. And the soup is even easier: just add everything that is indicated in the layout there, and you don’t even need to follow it - it won’t burn. With this approach, those tasteless, ordinary dishes are obtained in canteens, having the same smell everywhere - from Brest to Vladivostok.

Of course, there are simply not enough culinary gifted people for all the canteens, just as there cannot be hundreds of thousands of artists and musicians. Talent is still rare. But there is another reason why there are even much fewer culinary talents than musical ones. Usually, musical talent manifests itself very early and, most importantly, immediately becomes noticeable to others. And so it almost never goes unnoticed. Only purely unfavorable conditions can lead to the fact that a musically gifted person will not follow his beloved path. He himself, in any case, will feel that music is his vocation.

Another thing is culinary talent. It is usually difficult for her to come to light, especially in a man. And with a woman, it even more often goes unnoticed by others, because it is regarded as something taken for granted. Many potentially talented cooks tend to serve as anyone: salespeople, engineers, cashiers, accountants, actors, photographers, scientists, and cook in their spare time, unaware that this is not an accidental inclination, but a serious calling, and sometimes deliberately hiding this secret passion out of a sense of false modesty or false shame.

It is quite clear that others know even less about such potential culinary talents, and if they find out, then after a few decades, when it is too late for such a person to study as a cook, because by this time he had already become either an agronomist, or a machinist, or a writer and his talent perceived at best as a quirk, and sometimes as inappropriate eccentricity.

Why is this happening? One of the main reasons is the lack of prestige of the profession of a cook during the last, say, 80-100 years. If in the 17th–18th centuries and the beginning of the 19th century this profession in most European countries was associated with a high social position, if at that time the names of the best chefs were known to the whole country and they were recorded, for example in France, in the annals of history, then over the past century it became mass, ordinary. That is why bright talents in this area do not strive to prove themselves, and others often even consciously suppress such a desire.

Another reason - the lack of early training in the culinary specialty - also prevents the young talent from understanding what he is drawn to.

Let me give you a real, non-fictional example. One boy, from a very early age, from about four or five years old, often stayed at home in the kitchen instead of playing with peers on the street with great pleasure. Here, too, there was a kind of game: give mom a spoon, a ladle, bring salt, collect onion peel - all these little assignments were real and at the same time similar to a game. When the child stuck out too long in the kitchen, they shouted at him that he was underfoot, and then he simply sat on a chair in a corner and patiently watched the adults from there. This was also interesting. Actions changed all the time: it was either peeling potatoes, then cutting parsley, then washing rice, cutting meat or fish. Everything was different in color, shape, processing, and much more entertaining than the monotonous rolling of a wheel or the same games of bast shoes and hide and seek. But the most interesting thing was how these raw products turned out to be a delicious dinner.

Once the boy went with his dad to a rest home and there he accidentally found himself in a large kitchen, where huge stoves, a lot of shiny pots and stewpans of different sizes, giant boilers gave the impression of a factory. This impression was reinforced by the presence of several chefs in white uniforms and tall chef's hats. They operated near the mountains of potatoes, carrots, onions, whole carcasses of meat, beat up whole buckets of eggs and prepared tens of hundreds of cutlets, barrels of jelly, mountains of cream. But the most surprising thing was the presence of children here, dressed, like the cooks, in all white, who had their caps. They quickly scurried from the wall cabinets with dishes and kitchen utensils to the stoves where the cooks worked, giving various orders to the cooks. These children, it turns out, were allowed to participate in the adult game, and this game was called work.

When the boy began to go to school, he no longer had time to sit in the kitchen. Other interests appeared over the years: school circles, museums, theaters, and most importantly, books, the reading of which consumed the lion's share of time and opened eyes to the big world, to distant countries, peoples, to past times.

Interest in the kitchen disappeared, or rather, it seemed to simply disappear along with other interests of early childhood: toys, candy wrappers, sledding. He simply forgot himself behind a mass of other, more important activities.

True, already as a teenager, when he had a free minute, the boy went to the kitchen to casually look at whether dinner would be soon, and sometimes, out of old habit, he lingered to look with a more meaningful look at what was being prepared and how. But such visits, if they began to be repeated too often, caused bewilderment, irritation and even condemnation in adults. When a young man appeared in the kitchen, either by chance or on business (he went in for salt, a spoon, etc.), ridicule was immediately heard: “Well, you, kitchen commissar, get out of here!” There was a street, a yard where peers-teenagers were already secretly starting to smoke. It was a "man's job".

But the boy did not want to smoke with the guys, and later he never learned to smoke. By the way, a real grocery store, culinary specialist, confectioner, for whom cooking is really a vocation, will never smoke. This is out of the question. It is impossible to understand the intricacies of the taste and smell of products, products and dishes without having an excellent sense of smell and a developed, refined taste. Smoking completely discourages both. Therefore, a smoking cook is either a misunderstanding or a mockery of common sense. And it is not so rare for us, when hiring a person to work in public catering, they are interested in anything, but not whether he smokes, whether he drinks, and they do not refuse him a place on the grounds that he is a smoker or a drunkard. Although it would be the fairest refusal. A cook or confectioner must have a sensitive taste and neither temporarily nor chronically be bred.

What does this international culinary term mean? Bridost, or asperation, comes from the Old Slavonic word "bridk" - rough, raw, uncouth, or the Latin "asper" - rough, rough, prickly. This word is ancient and existed for a thousand years - from the 9th to the beginning of the 20th century. Now it has completely disappeared not only from everyday language, but even from dictionaries. It, for example, is not in the modern standard spelling dictionary of the Russian language, but it was widely used in the 11th-17th centuries, when it meant bitterness, spoilage, the absence of any taste of food, and was also used figuratively in situations not related to food or culinary business. So, in the old days they talked about the "braziness of the soul", i.e. about the callousness, heartlessness and even ferocity of a person.

Currently, as a highly professional word in the cooking language, the term "bredness" has two meanings:

1. The complete lack of culinary taste in this or that person, equivalent to the lack of hearing of a musician. Such persons should not be allowed to work as cooks.

In order to avoid the penetration into the environment of cooks and confectioners of persons who have bredness and are actually incapable of this profession, even if they had a personal desire to engage in it, previously candidates for chef's apprentices always underwent a special test for bredness before training, and only after that the question of their admission to the rest of the exams in the profession.

2. Temporary loss or distortion of taste in a cook or confectioner, similar to the temporary loss of a singer's voice. This is the so-called functional bullshit.

Such delirium occurs as a result of overwork, excitement, diseases of the internal secretion organs or burns of the oral cavity after tasting too hot food or drinks.

Unfortunately, bridity, which has always been considered one of the most serious occupational diseases of culinary specialists, today often remains outside the attention of not only administrators, doctors, but sometimes even the chefs themselves.

Various measures have been taken for a long time to prevent rancidity and maintain a fresh taste sensation throughout the cook's working day. First, a system was developed for testing dishes in a certain sequence. Secondly, the cook during the working day continuously from time to time had to rinse the mouth with various refreshing (mainly fruit or vegetable) compounds or spring water. Thirdly, already in the 18th century, a procedure was established in which the cook had the right to eat only after both breakfast and lunch were cooked, that is, immediately before dinner was served to the table, not earlier than 12 noon. A reminder of this order is still the opening time of restaurants, timed to 11-12 hours.

For all these reasons, the cooking profession was considered difficult, difficult, and exhausting, which is at odds with our current idea, which depicts the work of a cook as a kind of rolling cheese in butter.

In the confectionery business, functional bridity occurs quite often, but usually does not last long - 2-3 hours. This is the result of high temperatures in pastry shops (especially where biscuits are made) and saturation of the air with a stupefying sweet smell. Confectionery fever usually goes away if you drink strong, hot, unsweetened tea or swallow beaten raw egg whites with ice.

Now we know what debauchery is, and we can continue our story about the boy. He was already a young man and was drafted into the army. Here, on the very first day, he got acquainted with soldier's food. He appreciated it, having eaten a portion without a trace. The food seemed to him simple, but appetizing. It was different from homemade food, but at the same time it did not look like canteen food. She was not varied. But she didn't come. Only after many years, even decades, did he learn that his assessment was correct. Soldier's cuisine has its own rules and traditions, which sharply distinguish it from civilian canteen food and bring it closer to home cooking both in menu selection and technology. At the same time, some dishes of soldier's cuisine get that classic taste that not always and not everyone manages to get at home. Such, for example, porridge. In the army, they are cooked by a special cook - a cook who has, as they say, got his hand on it. In addition, the porridges are cooked there in thick cast-iron cauldrons, cast in the oven, and therefore come out excellent if an experienced eye watches them.

In the very first outfit for the kitchen, we were able to verify this. True, work in the army kitchen was devoid of any romanticism even in that wartime. At night, when everyone was asleep, the squad did hard, exhausting, unattractive work: most of them manually peeled endless piles of potatoes - hundreds of kilograms, tons. Others washed and scraped the cauldrons: the day before, the shift did not follow the cooking of porridge. Hardening formed: a half-burnt, half-sweet build-up on the walls of the boiler, which had to be cleaned off without leaving a trace. But it is impossible to scrape: scratches on the walls of the boiler, violation of the half-day would lead to the fact that the porridge would burn again, and regardless of whether they were watching it this time or not. That is why the cook selected the brightest and most conscientious guys to clean the boiler, adding, to be sure, that for every scratch on the boiler they will receive two outfits out of turn.

Boiler cleaned up like new. The porridge came out wonderful, although everyone was terribly tired. After all, the cauldron contained two people who climbed into it and, bending over in three deaths, cleaned centimeter by centimeter, like restorers of a picture.

Soup was also unusual. There was one interesting detail here. Each soldier relied on one bay leaf, and two buckets of dry leaves went out to the battalion. If you load them even into a large cauldron, then they will turn out to be a hindrance: after all, the sheet does not boil down, but becomes a little larger, in contrast to other products. Two buckets of hard leaves would either have come out with a “cap” above the surface of the soup, or they would have forced them not to add water to the boiler, not to add carrots and potatoes. Therefore, usually cooks violated the layout at this point. They either put a sachet of bay leaves into the soup, that is, 15-20 times less than the norm, or they didn’t put it at all, believing that the lack of lavrushka was a trifling matter, or, finally, they took lavrushka from the warehouse, but spent it on other needs.

Here the chef turned out to be a person of a different character. When only 10 minutes were left until the soup was ready and the soup had boiled down enough, he poured the bay leaf into a free two-bucket pot with boiling water and after 5-7 minutes, having drained the fragrant broth formed from there, poured it into the soup. But most of all, the cook surprised the newcomers by the fact that when dinner was ripe, he did not immediately eat, but only after tasting a spoon or two of each dish, he was convinced that everything was cooked deliciously. He also boiled some dried fruits without sugar for himself and drank this broth along with tea. Only after the whole battalion had had lunch did the cook eat the full meal.

Only many years later, in one of the classic French cookery books, was it possible to read that this should be the behavior of a professional cook of a good school.

Apparently, the battalion cook belonged to this category of cooks. This is also evidenced by the fact that he cooked a variety of dishes, and in the neighboring part there were always two or three dishes on duty. The layout, the type of products and their quantity, the norms were the same in both parts and came from the same warehouse.

This means that the variety of ready-made dishes, the difference in the menu depends not so much on the products, but on the chef's imagination, or rather, on his knowledge, skill, creative streak and culinary erudition.

For example, both parts received the same vegetables: potatoes, carrots, cabbage, some dried parsley and onions, not to mention spices: pepper, laurel. But the cook from the neighboring part “driven” only two dishes from them: today, having concentrated the cabbage in two or three days, he made cabbage soup, and tomorrow, on the contrary, choosing the potatoes that were not received in the past days from the warehouse, he prepared potato soup with carrots. Our chef made various soups from the same products, and sometimes main courses, which he called “vegetable confusion” - this name he apparently came up with himself, because it was not listed anywhere in cookbooks. In winter, such a vegetable stew as a second course was especially desired and desired. In the summer, when the unit was in the steppe, he sent an outfit to collect wild garlic and spelt; in the forest - berries, mushrooms, sarana roots, nuts; near settlements - nettles and quinoa. No matter how many of these random additions to dinner were collected, he put any little in the common cauldron. And the familiar dish acquired a new aroma and smell, was perceived as completely unfamiliar and was eaten with great appetite and therefore with greater benefit.

Our culinary soldier happened to eat the first quinoa soup in his life in the army, and it was a truly wonderful dish that was remembered for a long time. It greatly shook the notion of swan created by literature as a classic food for the hungry and destitute.

There were other examples of the creative approach of a modest battalion cook to an ordinary soldier's dinner. Once, already at the end of the war in the spring of 1944, maize (corn) flour arrived, which was sent by the allies. Nobody knew what to do with her. In some places they began to add it to wheat flour when baking bread, which made it brittle, quickly stale and caused complaints from the soldiers. But they did not know how to use this, in essence, a very valuable food product in any other way. The soldiers grumbled at the cooks, the cooks scolded the commissaries, who, in turn, cursed the allies who had melted maize for us, which the devil himself would not deal with. Only our cook did not grieve. He immediately took a half-monthly norm instead of daily gram supplements, sent a reinforced outfit to the steppe, asking them to collect almost everything in a row - quinoa, alfalfa, shepherd's purse, sorrel, wild garlic, and prepared delightful in taste and most beautiful in appearance corn cakes - cakes with greens, bright , yellowish outside and burning green inside. They were soft, fragrant, fresh, like spring itself, and better than any other means, they reminded the soldiers of home, of the imminent end of the war, of peaceful life.

And two weeks later the cook made hominy, almost the entire battalion got acquainted with this national Moldavian dish for the first time. The soldiers were sorry that they sent too little maize, and would not mind exchanging wheat flour for it.

Even simple acorn coffee, our chef tried to make it tastier than usual, finding ways to brew it cooler and more aromatic.

Of course, these episodes passed as if unnoticed amid the formidable events of the war, but nevertheless remained in the memory and surfaced especially clearly later, when it turned out to be possible to compare the army table with the post-war catering and home meals, when many years had passed and it became clear that the fighting mood of the soldiers Last but not least, it was created by the cook, his skill, his talent, and that food, not only in the literal sense, as a physiological fuel, but also in a purely emotional sense, influenced the uplift of the spirit, helped to forge victory, and made a significant contribution to the combat training of soldiers.

The emotional impact of food is especially well known to sailors who have a good cook in their crew. Excellent cuisine brightens up many of the shady sides of hard and homeless marine life. Unfortunately, this mystery of the impact of the aromatic-gustatory components of food (and not only and not so much the food itself) on the emotional sphere of our psyche is still little studied by scientists.

Meanwhile, this is by no means a mirage, but a reality. Delicious food leaves positive memories, good emotions. Tasteless food, even if its excess, either does not leave anything in the memory of itself, or contributes to the accumulation of negative associations. From this it can be seen that the aromatic and gustatory quality of food, and not only the sanitary and food quality, which is usually taken into account, is of exceptional importance in human life. And this is exactly what it is worth becoming a cook for, for which it is worth overcoming all the difficulties and unpleasant moments in learning to cook, but for which talent is undoubtedly needed.

If you now ask that boy, who has already grown up a long time ago and has chosen a specialty far from cooking, what he would like to be and whether he even thought of becoming a cook, then, in all likelihood, he would not be able to give a definite answer to this question. After all, the whole point is that both a real strong interest and a fleeting external passion manifest themselves in the earliest childhood equally sincerely, equally instinctively, unconsciously and unconsciously. Only adult, experienced people can distinguish at this moment a deep manifestation of talent from a fleeting curiosity and, in accordance with this, give the necessary impetus in the right direction, while the child himself can hardly be aware of his desires, his aspirations as some kind of special, only inherent to him alone. It seemed to our boy that "playing in the kitchen" and watching how adults cook should be interesting for everyone.

But adults, instead of showing elementary sensitivity and attention, respect for the outstanding interest of the child, did everything to eliminate this interest. They, firstly, pointed out to the child that his interest was "girlish", they kicked him out of the kitchen, did everything possible to put an end to this (in their opinion!) unnecessary tendency.

What the child felt while he was experiencing all this, we can only guess. But, apparently, it is very difficult if the talent really was. Maybe if adults supported his aspiration, it would have received a brilliant development.

It is known that human destiny is decided in the early years. We should not forget that the first five years of life is the most crucial stage in the formation of personality. It was at this time that individual traits, character traits and moral and volitional attitudes of a person are largely laid down and determined. Emphasizing this idea, the famous Russian poet Valery Bryusov, who himself wrote plays from the age of three, said, perhaps somewhat grotesquely, hyperbolically: “Whoever has not read books at the age of five, then you will not learn anything later.” And Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy quite seriously wrote: “From a five-year-old child to me is one step. And from a newborn to a five-year-old is a terrible distance. So remember this, young dads and moms.

But even for an adult, although not for everyone, it is not always easy to understand a child. What is attractive for a child and seems like a fun game, for an adult often seems like a tedious routine, gray everyday life. This sometimes applies to everything related to culinary practice.

Russian cuisine has long been widely known throughout the world. This is manifested as a direct penetration into the international restaurant cuisine of primordially Russian food products (caviar, red fish, sour cream, buckwheat, rye flour, etc.) or some of the most famous dishes of the Russian national menu (jelly, cabbage soup, fish soup, pancakes, pies, etc.), and in the indirect influence of Russian culinary art on the cuisines of other peoples.

Assortment of Russian cuisine dishes at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. became so diverse, and its influence and popularity in Europe are so great that by this time they were talking about it with the same respect as about the famous French cuisine.

Russian national cuisine has gone through an extremely long path of development, marked by several major stages, each of which has left an indelible mark.

Old Russian cuisine, which developed from the 9th-10th centuries. and reached its greatest prosperity in the XV-XVI centuries, although its formation covers a huge historical period, it is characterized by common features that have largely been preserved to this day.

At the beginning of this period, Russian bread made from sour (yeast) rye dough appeared - this uncrowned king on our table, without it the Russian menu is now unthinkable - and all other important types of Russian bread and flour products also arose: the known to us saiki, bagels, juicy, donuts, pancakes, pancakes, pies, etc. These products were prepared exclusively on the basis of sour dough - so characteristic of Russian cuisine throughout its historical development. The addiction to sour, kvass was also reflected in the creation of Russian real kissels - oatmeal, wheat and rye, which appeared long before modern ones. Mostly berry jelly.

A large place in the menu was also occupied by various gruels and porridges, which were originally considered ritual, solemn food.

All this bread, flour food diversified most of all with fish, mushrooms, forest berries, vegetables, milk, and very rarely - with meat.

By the same time, the appearance of classic Russian drinks - all kinds of honey, kvass, sbitney.

Already in the early period of the development of Russian cuisine, a sharp division of the Russian table into lean (vegetable-fish-mushroom) and fast food (milk-egg-meat) was outlined, which had a huge impact on its further development until the end of the 19th century. The artificial creation of a line between fast and fast tables, isolating some products from others, preventing their mixing ultimately led to the creation of only some original dishes, and the whole menu suffered as a whole - it became more monotonous, simplified.

It can be said that the Lenten table was more fortunate: since most of the days in the year - from 192 to 216 in different years - were considered Lenten (and these fasts were observed very strictly), it was natural to expand the assortment of the Lenten table. Hence the abundance of mushroom and fish dishes in Russian cuisine, the tendency to use various vegetable raw materials - grains (porridge), vegetables, wild berries and herbs (nettles, gouts, quinoa, etc.).

Moreover, such well-known from the tenth century. vegetables like cabbages, turnips, radishes, peas, cucumbers were cooked and eaten - whether raw, salted, steamed, boiled or baked - separately from one another. Therefore, for example, salads and especially vinaigrettes have never been characteristic of Russian cuisine and appeared in Russia already in the 19th century. as a borrowing from the West. But they were also originally made mainly with one vegetable, giving the corresponding name to the salad - cucumber salad, beetroot salad, potato salad, etc.

Each type of mushroom - milk mushrooms, saffron mushrooms, mushrooms, ceps, morels, stoves (champignons), etc. - was salted or cooked completely separately, which, by the way, is still practiced today. The same can be said about fish, which was consumed boiled, dried, salted, baked, and less often fried. In the literature, we meet juicy, “delicious” names of fish dishes: sigovina, taimenin, pike, halibut, catfish, salmon, sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, beluga and others. And the ear could be perch, and ruff, and burbot, and sturgeon, etc.

Thus, the number of dishes by name was huge, but all of them differed little from each other in content. Taste diversity was achieved, firstly, by the difference in heat and cold processing, as well as the use of various oils, mainly vegetable (hemp, nut, poppy, olive, and much later sunflower), and secondly, the use of spices. Of the latter, onion, garlic, horseradish, dill were most often used, and in very large quantities, as well as parsley, anise, coriander, bay leaf, black pepper and cloves, which appeared in Russia already in the 10th-11th centuries. Later, in the 15th - early 16th centuries, they were supplemented with ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, calamus (calamus root) and saffron.

In the initial period of the development of Russian cuisine, there was also a tendency to consume liquid hot dishes, which then received the general name "khlebova". The most widespread are such types of bread as cabbage soup, stews based on vegetable raw materials, as well as various mashes, brews, talkers, salomats and other varieties of flour soups.

As for meat and milk, these products were consumed relatively rarely, and their processing was not difficult. Meat, as a rule, was boiled in cabbage soup or porridge, milk was drunk raw, stewed or sour. Dairy products were used to make cottage cheese and sour cream, while the production of cream and butter remained almost unknown for a long time, at least until the 15th-16th centuries. these products appeared rarely, irregularly.

The next stage in the development of Russian cuisine is the period from the middle of the XVI century. until the end of the 17th century. At this time, not only the further development of variants of the lenten and fast meals continued, but the differences between the cuisines of various classes and estates were especially sharply indicated.

From that time on, the cuisine of the common people began to become more and more simple, the cuisine of the boyars, the nobility, and especially the nobility, became more and more refined. She collects, combines and generalizes the experience of previous centuries in the field of Russian cuisine, creates on the basis of it new, more complex versions of old dishes, and for the first time borrows and openly introduces into Russian cuisine a number of foreign dishes and culinary techniques, mainly of Eastern origin.

Particular attention is drawn to the modest festive table of that time. Along with the already familiar corned beef and boiled meat, a place of honor on the table of the nobility is occupied by twisted (that is, cooked on skewers) and fried meat, poultry and game. The types of meat processing are increasingly differentiated. So, beef goes mainly for cooking corned beef and for boiling (boiled slaughter); ham is made from pork for long-term storage, or it is used as fresh or milk pig in fried and stewed form, and in Russia only meat, lean pork is valued; finally, mutton, poultry and game are used mainly for roasts and only partly (mutton) for stewing.

In the 17th century all the main types of Russian soups finally add up, while kali, hangovers, hodgepodges, pickles, unknown in medieval Russia, appear.

The lenten table of the nobility is also enriched. A prominent place on it begins to be occupied by balyk, black caviar, which was eaten not only salted, but also boiled in vinegar or poppy milk.

Culinary of the 17th century Eastern and, first of all, Tatar cuisine has a strong influence, which is associated with the accession in the second half of the 16th century. to the Russian state of the Astrakhan and Kazan khanates, Bashkiria and Siberia. It was during this period that dishes from unleavened dough (noodles, dumplings), such products as raisins, apricots, figs (figs), as well as lemons and tea, the use of which has since become traditional in Russia, enter Russian cuisine. Thus, the sweet table is significantly replenished.

Next to the gingerbread, known in Russia even before the adoption of Christianity, one could see a variety of gingerbread, sweet pies, candies, candied fruits, numerous jams, not only from berries, but also from some vegetables (carrots with honey and ginger, radish in molasses) . In the second half of the XVII century. Cane sugar began to be brought to Russia (1), from which, together with spices, candies and snacks, sweets, delicacies, fruits, etc. were cooked. But all these sweet dishes were mainly the privilege of the nobility (2).

(2) The menu of the patriarchal dinner for 1671 already contains sugar and candy.

For the boyar table, an extraordinary abundance of dishes becomes characteristic - up to 50, and at the royal table their number grows to 150-200. The sizes of these dishes are also huge, for which the largest swans, geese, turkeys, the largest sturgeons or beluga are usually chosen - sometimes they are so large that three or four people lift them.

At the same time, there is a desire to decorate dishes. Palaces are built from foodstuffs, fantastic animals of gigantic proportions. Court dinners turn into a pompous, magnificent ritual that lasts 6-8 hours in a row - from two in the afternoon to ten in the evening - and includes almost a dozen meals, each of which consists of a whole series (sometimes two dozen) of the same name dishes, for example from a dozen varieties of fried game or salted fish, from a dozen types of pancakes or pies (3).

Thus, in the XVII century. Russian cuisine was already extremely diverse in terms of the range of dishes (we are talking, of course, about the cuisine of the ruling classes). At the same time, the art of cooking in the sense of the ability to combine products, to reveal their taste, was still at a very low level. Suffice it to say that, as before, mixing of products, their grinding, grinding, crushing was not allowed. Most of all, this applied to the meat table. Therefore, Russian cuisine, in contrast to French and German, for a long time did not know and did not want to accept various minced meats, rolls, pastes and cutlets.

All kinds of casseroles and puddings turned out to be alien to the ancient Russian cuisine. The desire to cook a dish from a whole large piece, and ideally from a whole animal or plant, persisted until the 18th century. The exception seemed to be fillings in pies, in whole animals and poultry, and in their parts - abomasum, omentum. However, in most cases, these were, so to speak, ready-made fillings, crushed by nature itself - grain (porridge), berries, mushrooms (they were not cut either). The fish for the filling was only plastified, but not crushed. And only much later - at the end of the XVIII century. and especially in the nineteenth century. - already under the influence of Western European cuisine, some fillings began to grind on purpose.

The next stage in the development of Russian cuisine begins at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. and lasts a little more than a century - until the first decade of the XIX century. At this time, there is a radical delimitation of the cuisine of the ruling classes and the cuisine of the common people. If in the 17th century the cuisine of the ruling classes still retained a national character and its difference from the folk cuisine was expressed only in the fact that in terms of quality, abundance and assortment of products and dishes it sharply surpassed the folk cuisine, then in the 18th century. the cuisine of the ruling classes gradually began to lose the Russian national character.

Since the time of Peter the Great, the Russian nobility and the rest of the nobility have been borrowing and introducing Western European culinary traditions. Wealthy nobles who visited Western Europe brought foreign chefs with them. At first they were mostly Dutch and German, especially Saxon and Austrian, then Swedish and predominantly French. From the middle of the XVIII century. foreign cooks were discharged so regularly that they soon almost completely replaced the cooks and serf cooks from the higher nobility.

One of the new customs that appeared at this time should be considered the use of snacks as an independent dish. German sandwiches, French and Dutch cheeses that came from the West and hitherto unknown on the Russian table were combined with old Russian dishes - cold corned beef, jelly, ham, boiled pork, as well as caviar, salmon and other salted red fish in a single serving or even in a special meal - breakfast.

There were also new alcoholic drinks - ratafii and erofeichi. Since the 70s of the XVIII century, when tea began to gain more and more importance, in the highest circles of society, sweet pies, pies and sweets stood out beyond the dinner, which were combined with tea in a separate serving and timed to 5 pm.

Only in the first half of the 19th century, after the Patriotic War of 1812, in connection with the general upsurge of patriotism in the country and the struggle of Slavophile circles with foreign influence, did progressive representatives of the nobility begin to revive interest in national Russian cuisine. However, when in 1816 the Tula landowner V. A. Levshin tried to compile the first Russian cookbook, he was forced to state that “information about Russian dishes has almost completely disappeared” and therefore “it is now impossible to present a complete description of Russian cooking and should be content only by what else can be collected from what remains in memory, for the history of Russian cookery has never been given over to description” (4). As a result, the descriptions of Russian cuisine dishes collected by V. A. Levshin from memory were not only not accurate in their recipe, but also in their assortment far from reflecting the real richness of the dishes of the Russian national table.

(4) Levshin V. A. Russian cookery. M., 1816. The cuisine of the ruling classes and during the first half of the XIX century. continued to develop in isolation from the folk, under the noticeable influence of French cuisine. But the very nature of this influence has changed significantly. In contrast to the 18th century, when there was a direct borrowing of foreign dishes, such as cutlets, sausages, omelettes, mousses, compotes, etc., and the displacement of primordially Russian ones, in the first half of the 19th century. a different process was designated - the processing of the Russian culinary heritage, and in the second half of the 19th century. even the restoration of the Russian national menu begins, however, again with French adjustments.

A number of French chefs worked in Russia during this period, radically reforming the Russian cuisine of the ruling classes. The first French chef who left a mark on the reform of Russian cuisine was Marie-Antoine Karem - one of the first and few chefs-researchers, chefs-scientists. Before coming to Russia at the invitation of Prince P.I. Bagration, Karem was the cook of the English Prince Regent (future King George IV), Duke of Württemberg, Rothschild, Talleyrand. He was keenly interested in the cuisines of various nations. During his short stay in Russia, Karem got acquainted with Russian cuisine in detail, appreciated its merits and outlined ways to free it from alluvial.

Karem's successors in Russia continued the reform he had begun. This reform touched, firstly, the order of serving dishes to the table. adopted in the 18th century. The “French” serving system, when all dishes were put on the table at the same time, was replaced by the old Russian way of serving, when one dish replaced another. At the same time, the number of changes was reduced to 4-5 and a sequence was introduced in serving dinner, in which heavy dishes alternated with light and appetizing ones. In addition, whole-cooked meat or poultry was no longer served on the table; before serving, they began to be cut into portions. With such a system, decorating dishes as an end in itself has lost all meaning.

The reformers also advocated the replacement of dishes from crushed and mashed products, which occupied a large place in the cuisine of the ruling classes in the 18th and early 19th centuries, with dishes from natural products more typical of Russian cuisine. So there were all kinds of chops (lamb and pork) from a whole piece of meat with a bone, natural steaks, bedbugs, langets, entrecotes, escalopes.

At the same time, the efforts of culinary specialists were aimed at eliminating the heaviness and indigestibility of some dishes. So, in the recipes for cabbage soup, they discarded the flour podbolt that made them tasteless, which was preserved only by virtue of tradition, and not common sense, they began to widely use potatoes in garnishes, which appeared in Russia in the 70s of the 18th century.

For Russian pies, they suggested using soft puff pastry made from wheat flour instead of rye sour. They also introduced a safe method of preparing dough with pressed yeast, which we use today, thanks to which the sour dough, which previously took 10-12 hours to prepare, began to ripen in 2 hours.

French chefs also paid attention to appetizers, which became one of the specific features of the Russian table. If in the XVIII century. the German form of serving snacks prevailed - sandwiches, then in the 19th century. they began to serve appetizers on a special table, each type on a special dish, beautifully decorating them, and thus expanded their assortment so much, choosing among the appetizers a whole range of old Russian not only meat and fish, but also mushroom and vegetable sauerkraut dishes, that their abundance and variety henceforth never ceased to be a constant object of astonishment to foreigners.

Finally, the French school introduced a combination of products (vinaigrettes, salads, side dishes) and precise dosages in recipes that were not previously accepted in Russian cuisine, and introduced Russian cuisine to Western European kitchen appliances unknown to it.

At the end of the XIX century. the Russian stove and pots and cast-iron pots specially adapted to its thermal regime were replaced by a stove with its oven, pots, stewpans, etc. Instead of a sieve and a sieve, they began to use colanders, skimmers, meat grinders, etc.

An important contribution of French culinary specialists to the development of Russian cuisine was the fact that they prepared a whole galaxy of brilliant Russian chefs. Their students were Mikhail and Gerasim Stepanov, G. Dobrovolsky, V. Bestuzhev, I. Radetsky, P. Grigoriev, I. Antonov, 3. Eremeev, N. Khodeev, P. Vikentiev and others, who supported and spread the best traditions of Russian cuisine in throughout the 19th century. Of these, G. Stepanov and I. Radetsky were not only outstanding practitioners, but also left behind extensive manuals on Russian cooking.

In parallel with this process of updating the cuisine of the ruling classes, carried out, so to speak, “from above” and concentrated in the noble clubs and restaurants of St. estates until the 70s of the XIX century. The source for this collection was folk cuisine, in the development of which a huge number of nameless and obscure, but talented serf cooks took part.

By the last third of the XIX century. Russian cuisine of the ruling classes, thanks to the unique assortment of dishes, their refined and delicate taste, began to occupy one of the leading places in Europe along with French cuisine.

At the same time, it must be emphasized that, despite all the changes, introductions and foreign influences, its main characteristic features have been preserved and have remained inherent in it to the present, as they have been steadfastly kept in the folk cuisine. These main features of Russian cuisine and the Russian national table can be defined as follows: an abundance of dishes, a variety of snack tables, a love for eating bread, pancakes, pies, cereals, the originality of the first liquid cold and hot dishes, a variety of fish and mushroom tables, the widespread use of pickles from vegetables and mushrooms, an abundance of a festive and sweet table with its jams, cookies, gingerbread, Easter cakes, etc.

Some features of Russian cuisine should be said in more detail. Even at the end of the XVIII century. Russian historian I. Boltin noted the characteristic features of the Russian table, including not only the prosperous. In the countryside, four times of food were accepted, and in the summer at work time - five: breakfast, or interception, afternoon tea, earlier than lunch, or at noon sharp, lunch, dinner and paupin.

These vyti, adopted in Central and Northern Russia, were also preserved in Southern Russia, but with different names. There at 6-7 o'clock in the morning they ate, at 11-12 they dined, at 14-15 they had an afternoon snack, at 18-19 they ate in the evening, and at 22-23 they had supper. With the development of capitalism, the working people in the cities began to eat at first three, and then only two times a day: breakfast at dawn, lunch or dinner when they came home. At work, they only had an afternoon snack, that is, they ate cold food. Gradually, any full meal, a full table with hot brew, began to be called lunch, sometimes regardless of the time of day.

Bread played an important role at the Russian table. For shchi or other first liquid dish in the village, they usually ate from half a kilo to a kilogram of black rye bread. White bread, wheat, was not actually distributed in Russia until the beginning of the 20th century. It was eaten occasionally and mostly by the wealthy segments of the population in the cities, and among the people they looked at it as a festive meal. Therefore, white bread, called a bun in a number of regions of the country (5), was not baked in bakeries, like black bread, but in special bakeries and sweetened slightly. Local varieties of white bread were Moscow saiks and kalachi, Smolensk pretzels, Valdai bagels, etc. Black bread differed not by the place of manufacture, but only by the type of baking and the type of flour - baked, custard, hearth, peeled, etc.

(5) "Bulka" - from the French word boule, which means "round like a ball." Initially, only French and German bakers baked white bread. From the 20th century came into use and other flour products from white, wheat, flour, previously not characteristic of Russian cuisine - vermicelli, pasta, while the use of pies, pancakes and cereals has decreased. In connection with the spread of white bread in everyday life, tea drinking with it sometimes began to replace breakfast and dinner.

The first liquid dishes, called from the end of the 18th century, retained unchanged importance in Russian cuisine. soups. Soups have always played a dominant role on the Russian table. No wonder the spoon was the main cutlery. It appeared with us earlier than the fork by almost 400 years. “A fork is like a hook, and a spoon is like a net,” said a popular proverb.

The assortment of national Russian soups - cabbage soup, mash, stew, fish soup, pickles, saltworts, botvins, okroshka, prisons - continued to grow in the 18th-20th centuries. various types of Western European soups like broths, mashed soups, various dressing soups with meat and cereals, which took root well thanks to the love of the Russian people for hot liquid brew.

In the same way, many soups of the peoples of our country have received a place on the modern Russian table, for example, Ukrainian borscht and kulesh, Belarusian beetroots and soups with dumplings. Many soups, especially vegetable and vegetable-cereal soups, were obtained from liquefied slurry-zaspitsa (i.e. slurry with vegetable filling) or are the fruits of restaurant cuisine. However, not they, despite their diversity, but the old, primordially Russian soups like cabbage soup and fish soup still determine the originality of the Russian table.

To a lesser extent than soups, fish dishes have retained their original significance on the Russian table. Some classic Russian fish dishes, like telnoye, have fallen into disuse. On the other hand, they are delicious and easy to make. It is quite possible to cook them from sea fish, which, by the way, was used in Russian cuisine in the old days, especially in Northern Russia, in Russian Pomorie. The inhabitants of these breadless regions in those days have long been accustomed to cod, halibut, haddock, capelin, navaga. “Lack of fish is worse than lack of bread,” the Pomors used to say then.

Known in Russian cuisine are steam, boiled, calf fish, that is, made in a special way from one fillet, without bones, fried, mended (filled with porridge or mushrooms), stewed, aspic, baked in scales, baked in a pan in sour cream , salted (salted), dried and dried (sushchik). In the Pechora and Perm regions, fish was also fermented (sour fish), and in Western Siberia they ate stroganina - frozen raw fish. Only the method of smoking fish was not widespread, which was developed mainly only in the last 70-80 years, i.e. since the beginning of the 20th century.

Characteristic of the old Russian cuisine was the widespread use of spices in a fairly large assortment. However, the decline in the role of fish, mushroom and game dishes, as well as the introduction of a number of German dishes into the menu, has affected the reduction in the share of spices used in Russian cuisine.

In addition, due to the high cost, many spices, as well as vinegar and salt, have been sold since the 17th century. people began to use re in the process of cooking, and put it on the table and use it already during meals, depending on the desire of everyone. This custom gave rise to later assert that Russian cuisine allegedly did not use spices. At the same time, they referred to the well-known essay by G. Kotoshikhin about Russia in the 17th century, where he wrote: “There is a custom to cook without seasonings, without pepper and inbir, lightly salted and without vinegar.” Meanwhile, the same G. Kotoshikhin further explained: “And as soon as they start the nets and in which there is little vinegar and salt and pepper, they add them to the table” (6).

(6) Kotoshikhin G. About Russia in the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich. SPb. 1840. Since those distant times, the custom has remained to put salt in a salt shaker, pepper in a pepper shaker, mustard and vinegar in separate jars while eating on the table. As a result, the skills of cooking with spices were not developed in the folk cuisine, while in the cuisine of the ruling classes, spices continued to be used in the cooking process. But Russian cuisine knew spices and seasonings even at the time of its formation, they were skillfully combined with fish, mushrooms, game, pies, soups, gingerbread, Easter and Easter cakes, and they were used carefully, but nevertheless constantly and without fail. And this circumstance should not be forgotten and overlooked when speaking about the peculiarities of Russian cuisine.

Finally, in conclusion, it is necessary to dwell on some technological processes inherent in Russian cuisine.

For a long period of the development of Russian national cuisine, the process of cooking was reduced to cooking or baking products in a Russian oven, and these operations were necessarily carried out separately. What was intended for boiling was boiled from beginning to end, what was intended for baking was only baked. Thus, Russian folk cuisine did not know what combined or even different, combined or double heat treatment was.

The heat treatment of food consisted in heating with the heat of a Russian stove, strong or weak, in three degrees - "before bread", "after bread", "in the free spirit" - but always without contact with fire and either with a constant temperature kept at the same level, or with a falling, decreasing temperature as the oven gradually cools down, but never with an increasing temperature, as in stovetop cooking. That is why the dishes always turned out not even boiled, but rather stewed or half-stewed, half-stewed, which is why they acquired a very special taste. Not without reason, many dishes of old Russian cuisine do not make the proper impression when they are cooked in other temperature conditions.

Does this mean that it is necessary to restore the Russian stove in order to get real dishes of Russian cuisine in modern conditions? Far from it. Instead, it is enough to simulate the thermal regime of falling temperature created by it. Such imitation is possible under modern conditions.

However, we should not forget that the Russian stove had not only a positive, but to a certain extent, negative influence on Russian cuisine - it did not stimulate the development of rational technological methods.

The introduction of plate cooking led to the need to borrow a number of new technological methods and, along with them, dishes from Western European cuisine, as well as to the reform of dishes of old Russian cuisine, their refining and development, and adaptation to new technology. This trend has proven to be fruitful. It helped save many dishes of Russian cuisine from oblivion.

Speaking of Russian cuisine, we have so far emphasized its features and characteristics, examined the history of its development and its content as a whole. Meanwhile, one should keep in mind the pronounced regional differences in it, explained mainly by the diversity of natural zones and the related dissimilarity of plant and animal products, the different influences of neighboring peoples, as well as the diversity of the social structure of the population in the past.

That is why the cuisines of Muscovites and Pomors, Don Cossacks and Siberians are very different. While in the North they eat venison, fresh and salted sea fish, rye pies, dezhni with cottage cheese and a lot of mushrooms, in the Don they roast and stew steppe game, eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, drink grape wine and cook pies with chicken meat. If the food of the Pomors is similar to the Scandinavian, Finnish, Karelian and Lappish (Sami), then the cuisine of the Don Cossacks was significantly influenced by Turkish, Nogai cuisines, and the Russian population in the Urals or Siberia follows the Tatar and Udmurt culinary traditions.

Regional features of a different plan have long been also inherent in the cuisines of the old Russian regions of Central Russia. These features are due to the medieval rivalry between Novgorod and Pskov, Tver and Moscow, Vladimir and Yaroslavl, Kaluga and Smolensk, Ryazan and Nizhny Novgorod. Moreover, they manifested themselves in the field of cuisine not in major dissimilarities, such as differences in cooking technology or in the availability of their own dishes in each region, as was the case, for example, in Siberia and the Urals, but in differences between the same dishes, in differences are often even insignificant, but nevertheless quite persistent.

A striking example of this is at least such common Russian dishes as fish soup, pancakes, pies, cereals and gingerbread: they were made throughout European Russia, but each region had its own favorite types of these dishes, their own minor differences in their recipes, their own appearance. , their methods of serving to the table, etc.

We owe this, if I may say so, “small regionality” to the emergence, development and existence so far, for example, of different types of gingerbread - Tula, Vyazma, Voronezh, Gorodetsky, Moscow, etc.

Regional differences, both large and small, naturally enriched Russian cuisine even more and diversified it. And at the same time, all of them did not change its basic character, because in each specific case, the above-mentioned common features, which together distinguish the national Russian cuisine throughout Russia from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, attract attention.

Portal for the student. Self-training

Shchi rich (full): recipe

Studen: recipe

Roast: recipe

Pike in sour cream: recipe

Fried mushrooms: recipe

Oatmeal porridge: recipe

Cabbage Pie: Recipe

Buckwheat-wheat pancakes: recipe

GREAT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CULINARY ARTS. ALL RECIPES V.V. POKHLEBKINA

FROM THE PUBLISHING HOUSE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SECRETS OF GOOD CUISINE

Chapter 1

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GREAT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CULINARY ARTS.
ALL RECIPES V.V. POKHLEBKINA