Russian cuisine according to "Domostroi" and "Painting of tsarist dishes"

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Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

An idea of ​​the nutrition of our ancestors can be obtained only from fragmentary information found in chronicles, folk epics, as well as from the results of archaeological excavations. However, the annals were not always impartial. After all, chroniclers are living people with their convictions, sympathies and, finally, to some extent censored.

If you blindly believe the statements of the Glade chronicler, you might think that before the adoption of Christianity in Russia, the food of our ancestors was primitive:

And the Drevlyans live in a bestial manner, they live in a bestial way: I kill each other, everything is unclean with poison ...

With regard to this entry, the writer V. Chivilikhin rightly noted:

The notorious chronicle phrase, written by a censored glade, was intended to emphasize the political and moral superiority of the grand-ducal metropolis, its Christian patronage ... As for, say, food, the Vyatichi, Drevlyans, Radimichi, Northerners and all other Pro-Russian peoples, as evidenced by objective science, ate about the same as what we are eating now, - meat, bird and fish, vegetables, fruits and berries, eggs, cottage cheese and porridge, seasoning with butter, anise, dill, vinegar and eating bread in the form of rugs, rolls, loaf, pies. They didn't know tea or vodka, but they knew how to make intoxicated honey, beer, kvass. Crystal wine glasses and glasses were successfully replaced with cups, turkey horns and charms ...

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

The evidence of these lines can be found in the lists of products and dishes that we find in the monastic everyday books, which, however, refer to a later historical period (XVI-XVII centuries). At the same time, it is well known that the nature of food for different peoples has been formed for centuries and subsequently practically does not change.

With the adoption of Christianity in Russia, monasteries appeared, in which unknown monks-ministers prepared numerous dishes. In surviving to this day "Monastic dining rooms for everyday life" you can find the richest lists of food products and dishes, which confirms the hypothesis of the successful development of the culinary art in ancient Russia.

Written monument of the 15th-16th centuries "Domostroy" gives us a more complete picture of the cuisine of Russian people in the pre-Petrine era. "Domostroy" - a set of everyday rules and manuals on housekeeping. It was processed in the middle of the 16th century by a contemporary of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, priest Sylvester.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

"Domostroy" is written in a colloquial, figurative, extremely expressive language. It intertwined old patriarchal customs with the new way of life of a wealthy city dweller of the 16th century. His domestic servant consists of hired cooks and other servants and servants, his wife runs the entire household and oversees the kitchen, raising children, but if she is guilty, the head of the family has the right to punish her on an equal basis with the servants.

The era of "Domostroi" is of particular interest to us, since later, in the era of Peter I, foreign cuisine took a significant place in the diet of rich people.

In the 16th century, the very concept of cuisine among the Russian people was much broader than in our time. It included baking bread, brewing kvass, beer, making cheeses, vinegar, jam, marshmallow. In the kitchen, they cooked oatmeal, sometimes they ground grain, and canned food, since food crafts have not yet separated from cooking and have not differentiated. Therefore, there were cooks in rich houses "Leavened", "Eaten", "bread".

The leavened cookery was equipped with vats, barrels, measuring tanks, and breeches (ladles).

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

Numerous methods of canning food, given in "Domostroy"... For example, a fish rod (balyk), dried, dried, windy (air-dried), salted.Meat was prepared in different ways: poltevo (ice cream in half carcasses), corned beef, windy, smoked ham. Of the other canned foods, the most common were sauerkraut and beets, pickles, plums and lemons. They could not do without dried fruits, jam in molasses, fruit marshmallows.

IN "Domostroy" provides original ways of preserving food, such as small fish. It was dried, ground, and then the resulting mass was poured into sour cabbage soup ("A thrifty person buys fresh fish and salts one, cooks another, dries another fine, another crush and pours it into the post"). Commenting on this method of canning from the point of view of modern cooking, it should be noted that with this method of drying the fish is utilized most fully, and even the calcium salts of the bone skeleton, dissolving in the lactic acid of sauerkraut, are partially absorbed by the body.

The quote goes on to say that the fish "Cook"... We are talking about the now forgotten method of canning. It was probably pickled in a spicy brine before "Cooked" fish. In the XVI-XVII centuries, this product was called "wind" fish.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

TO "Domostroy" attached "A book throughout the year that is served on the tables", also composed in 1547 by Sylvester. Of course, it cannot be called a cookbook, but rather a list of food raw materials and products. Here is just a small list:

Steam bream, fresh chilled herring, white backs, scars, backs of non-salted fish, pike fish soup with pepper, perch fish soup, crucian fish soup, beluga tavranchuk, zander fish soup, gnawed pike, perch, dewed carp, hazelnut, pike, salted salmon with horseradish beluga shaba, shekhonskaya sturgeon, whitefish, sturgeon sturgeon, salmon, steam sterlet, steamed livers, nuts, cones, kernels, miscellaneous, spongy cheeses, sour cream cheeses, lean bread, pressed caviar, fresh sturgeon caviar, pressed sturgeon caviar, xeni xeni salmon, boiled caviar, pea noodles, pancakes, shti, onions, hearth pies with poppy seeds, levashniki.

In this picturesque array of foods and supplies, some of the names are in need of clarification today. So, shab beluzhiy is the old name for brisket (teshi), xeni is fresh caviar, levashniki is dry pastille of berries and fruits, which was sometimes rolled into tubes ("Pipes").

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

IN "Domostroy" there is a lot of data on the properties of food products, methods of obtaining them, storage, and the rules for caring for dishes. Particular attention is paid to the need for thorough washing of products, their good primary and thermal processing ("boil", "evaporate"), Advice is given on how to give food high

taste and pleasant appearance ("... make good use of all the food"). By "Domostroy" it can be seen that even then, to improve the taste properties of the prepared dishes, Russian cooks widely used a variety of flavors and spices: garlic, onion, saffron (for soups and gravies), nutmeg (for honey), cloves (for honey and some soups), pepper. The necessary taste properties of individual dishes were also achieved by combining different products. Poppy milk (“zabela”) was added to many dishes (dough, porridge, cabbage soup) for these purposes. For example, fish caviar was boiled in poppy milk. From later sources, it is known about pies with poppy juice, pancakes with poppy cottage cheese. Nowadays it has become known that poppy milk, which has a specific taste and is rich in fats, does not contain opium alkaloids.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

In pre-Petrine Russia, hemp milk was also widely used, which was called "lean milk". They used it to season cabbage soup, cook products in it, and add it to many dishes.

It is curious that the instructions in "Domostroy" were given with a view to different social groups of the population. Of course, the food of the servants, the poor people, was very different from the food of the rich people.In particular, Domostroy recommended to the servants on meat days at lunchtime - thick cabbage soup with lard, a piece of meat, and for dinner - cabbage soup, milk, porridge; on fast days at lunchtime - cabbage soup, liquid porridge (sometimes with poppy juice), sometimes peas, sometimes dried fish, sometimes turnips (stewed turnip), and at dinner - cabbage soup, cabbage, oatmeal and sometimes pickle, botvinu; on holidays for dinner, in addition - different pies, thick (beer stillage, obviously, seasoned with honey), or herring porridge, pancakes, jelly, beer, mash.

Porridge was cooked from rye, wheat, buckwheat, oats, barley, millet. The peas were cooked purely, and if they were cooked whole ("until the shell comes off"), they were called "Goat".

There is a mention of herring, zander, sterlet, sevruga porridge or porridge. They boiled fish, cut into pieces, then added cereals and cooked until cooked.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

The word "cabbage soup" in those days had two meanings: this was the name of the cabbage dish (however, there were "Turnips" cabbage soup) and an effervescent drink of the kvass type ("shti sour"), which was prepared on beer leftovers and stored in barrels all year round. Cabbage soup as a drink survived until the end of the 19th century. The Russian culinary expert K.K.Morokhovsky wrote about them at the beginning of this century:

... good sour cabbage soup makes up very healthy drinks

After all, for the preparation of effervescent cabbage soup, sprouted grains of edible cereals (rye, wheat, barley and buckwheat malt), containing many biologically active substances and vitamins, were used. Until the 19th century, there were more than 10 types of cabbage-kvass.

Among cold dishes, radish, meat and fish jelly, boiled dried mushrooms with horseradish and kvass, salted mushrooms with oil and vinegar, botvinia (a dish on kvass with cucumbers, onions, dried fish), sauerkraut, baked beets, pickled beets were especially popular , fish, dried, smoked and salted, baked, corned beef (vinegar, horseradish or kvass was served separately), poultry (salted poultry with kvass), game with salted plums, okroshka, rabbit kidneys in brine, etc. Horseradish, cucumbers were widely used salted, garlic, onion, salted caviar, fresh caviar (xeni), boiled in kvass or vinegar, caviar (baked caviar). In wealthy homes, salted watermelons and lemons were served.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

The dishes that made up the so-called second serving were divided into "fish soup" (fish, meat), cabbage soup, borscht. "Ears" cooked more in wealthy houses, in the palace kitchen, and cabbage soup and borscht from ancient times were valued as Russian folk dishes. Their taste still amazes Europeans. Saffron was often used to season the ear, and to cabbage soup and borscht - garlic.

Pies, pancakes, pancakes, etc. were served with the first courses or between them. Pies were often cooked in poppy seed oil or fried in oil ("yarn").

Cabbage soup and borscht it is not by chance that they gained world fame. In the language of the physiologist I.P. Pavlov, they have a sokogonny, appetite-stimulating effect. The kvass or lactic acid of sauerkraut or beet contained in these dishes has a beneficial effect on digestion. By the way, expediency from the point of view of physiology is inherent in general in dishes and side dishes made from beets and salted plums. We only have to regret that this folk tradition is being lost, since alkaline elements predominate in beets, which are so necessary for the body and which are so few in meat, fish, cereals.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

If the ukha was an accessory in the main aristocratic cuisine, then cabbage soup and borscht were used everywhere. They were also prepared from wild herbs. This is mentioned in "Domostroy", and then in later sources. Moreover, it is said about the use of wild herbs for food not as a remedy for hunger, but as a common food in the presence of all prosperity ("with meat and fish").

The second serving also included semi-liquid dishes (noodles with chicken, "ear", "kalya", etc.).

The third serve was roast with "bobs". In Dahl's dictionary there are several interpretations of the word "broth": broth, broth; water in which part of what was boiled in it blossomed; beef broth, served as a custom at weddings; stew from boiled onions to kvass; compote, dried fruits and berries, boiled and sweetened with raisins or honey; the same liquid broth for drinking from dry raspberries, raisins. Nowadays in the culinary literature it is customary to understand the word "boiled" as thick sauces-side dishes, that is, sour sauce-side dishes, served with the second courses of poultry, game, as well as roast beef. The most widespread are onion, cabbage, cranberry, lingonberry mixtures.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

They fried meat and fish mainly in large pieces in a Russian oven or on a spit, in pans, bowls, and latka. Dishes with cottage cheese (krupeniki, juicy) were also included in the third serving.

The fourth serving included levashniki, "trumpets", pastilles, pies, jelly, "daubs", "Tsargrad-style radish", etc.

Mazni is a very peculiar dish made from dried radish, ground into flour and cooked with honey, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and saffron.

Tsargrad-style radish - grated radish, boiled in boiling water, squeezed and seasoned with molasses, pepper and “other potions (spices), so that it is not bitter, but sweet,” and then fried.

From drinks served honey (intoxicating drinks made from diluted honey with spices), barley beer, millet, wheat, etc., kvass, cabbage soup (more spicy kvass), pickles (cucumber, cabbage, plum, etc.), while pickles filtered, seasoned to taste and called "put pickles."

Sbiten, which was widespread in the 18th century, is described in Domostroy, but the word "sbiten" itself has not yet been used. And its preparation is described as follows: "put nutmeg, cloves, fragrant potions in the oven fried in hot honey in bags". The word "sbiten" means "strong" (as "knocked down").

Thus, the shortest overview of the food of Russian people in the 16th century convinces us of the exceptional originality of our national cuisine, in its richness and rationality of many culinary techniques developed by centuries of practice.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

A literary source confirming the high level of Russian professional cookery of the pre-Petrine era is the "Painting of Tsarist Foods".

It so happened that the appearance of the most significant written monument, testifying to the Russian cuisine of the 16th-17th centuries, is associated with one of the most difficult periods in the history of the Moscow state. In February 1610, during the Polish and Swedish intervention, part of the Russian feudal nobility proclaimed Vladislav IV (Vasa), the son of the Polish King and Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund III, as tsar. The very Sigismund, who sought the polonization of Ukraine and Belarus, supported False Dmitry I, and in 1609, having laid siege to Smolensk, began an open invasion of Russia.

Most of the boyars and common people met with hostility a stranger, and even a Catholic on the Russian throne, who did not know our customs. It was then that some of the boyars had the idea to write for him the "Painting of the Tsar's Food" (1610-1612), "in order to acquaint him with the order." The first part of this priceless monument - "Khlebnoe" - has been lost, and the second - "Estomoe", fortunately, has survived. There are many in this monument now forgotten dishes of the feudal elite of the Russian state. Let's get acquainted with some of them.

"Swans in a boil", that is, in a sauce. At that time, swans were still eaten in Russia. Let us recall that in "The Lay of Igor's Regiment" the princes fired at the kolpa (swans).

There are also "uchi and hares twisted" - that means, fried on a spit.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

Mentioned are "yarn" pies and pies. Yarn - fry in fat. Later, this Russian culinary term was replaced by the unfortunate expression "deep-fried".

The list of soups is very wide: fish soup (yellow, black, white, chicken, fish and even hare), cabbage soup, kali (pickle-type soups), semi-liquid dishes with noodles and cereals.

There were many dishes of mutton and beef, horse meat was no longer consumed at that time .. Only "the horse's heart and lips" were cooked in very spicy sauces (vzvarah). Pork was not in use.

The list of pies, pies and other baked goods is varied. Here and "carp" - pies made of unleavened dough, pies large and small, "sorcerers" (products such as ears with minced meat from cereals, mushrooms, etc.). There are “mantas” and “cauldrons” in this list - a clear trace of the Tatar-Mongol influence. Manty are large products such as dumplings, but of a very peculiar shape, cauldrons are puff pastry made from unleavened dough (the fact itself is remarkable - it means that unleavened puff pastry was known in Russia as early as the 13th-16th centuries).

Baked goods were usually served with soups: "And between the pies".This custom has survived to this day.

The list of food products in the "Rospis" is long: flour (granular and crushed), cereals (buckwheat, millet, rice), peas, meat products (swans, chickens, geese, lamb, beef, hares, horse giblets, hazel grouses, black grouse), eggs, milk, cottage cheese (cheese), butter, beef lard, nut butter, smelt, pike, sturgeon, sterlet, beluga, white fish, crucian carp, herring, bream, salmon, salmon, cabbage, mushrooms, sugar, spices (pepper, cinnamon, cloves, saffron), salted lemons. It is noteworthy that beef was rarely used by the Moscow nobility, and pork was not at all held in high esteem, although it was occasionally used ("ham in cabbage").

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

The originality of the dishes, the complexity of the preparation of many of them are striking. Cold snacks were especially diverse. The most frequently mentioned are milk with horseradish, salmon with garlic, caviar, xeni, pike heads under garlic, salted pikes, salted whitefish, scab (bock) beluga, salted chickens, ham in jelly (with jelly), ham with kvass and garlic, black grouse fried and coated with salted plums, grouse fried with lemon, fried lamb shoulder and sprinkled with chopped jelly ("Covered with jelly"), boiled pork, fried chicken, chopped into pieces and decorated with plums, pickled cucumbers, sauerkraut, etc. Many delicate chopped fish and poultry products were prepared (“corporeal"). They were served not only hot, but also cold, in jelly, aspic, etc.

The description of cold appetizers shows a high level of culinary technique. For example, fish and meat jelly was often used (“jelly"And" frozen fish soup "), very spicy side dishes - salted plums and lemons, etc.

Kvass was served as a seasoning for snacks, horseradish, crushed garlic with kvass and egg, etc.

The list of meat dishes is varied in the "Painting". Wildfowl and poultry deserved special love. They ate chickens from poultry, geese, less often ducks... At the same time, rather complex dishes were also prepared from chickens (chicken stuffed with rice and raisins).

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

Not a single feast was complete without dishes of offal, they were equally loved by both noble boyars and ordinary people (pig giblets, goose giblets, lamb liver, scars, lamb legsstuffed with eggs, etc.).

Fish dishes were prepared both on fast days and on holidays. They knew live, freshly dormant, salted, dried, smoked fish. The preference was given to salmon and sturgeon, bream, pike perch, pike, but did not refuse herring either.

The second courses were prepared by all methods known to us - they boiled, steamed, boiled over steam, fried in a pan, on a skewer ("twisted" hares, fish, chickens), in fat ("Knitted"). Mentioned in the literary monuments of that time and such complex dishes as fish "Spun in dough" (i.e. deep-fried fish in dough). The fish was also stuffed. IN "Murals" there are "circles", "veal pancakes."

A characteristic feature of the Russian cuisine of that time was the use, along with the then widespread hemp oil, of walnut oil, which was used for frying flour and fish products, for filling snacks from mushrooms and caviar. They used a lot of poppy and its processed products - poppy milk. This milk was used in fasting places instead of sour cream (for filling soups), and caviar was boiled in it. This use of "vegetable milk" (soothing) has been preserved in our cuisine up to the 20th century. Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl explains the word "sychivo" as follows - seed juice or milk: almond, nut, poppy, hemp, etc.

The name of common dishes is porridge, cabbage soup, ear (dishes like stews) are rare in the "Painting". Porridges are often given as a side dish to other products (meat, poultry, fish). However, the cereals for these dishes were cooked along with the main products.

Domostroy and painting of the royal kitchen

In addition to milk, the recipe for buckwheat porridge also included eggs. The garnish was served with noodles and cabbage. Fried sausages with minced buckwheat porridge or eggs and onions were used as a side dish and second course.They were called "nanny" (used until the end of the 19th century).

A large place is given in the "Painting" to the list fritters and pancakes, the recipe and cooking technology of which have come down to our time almost unchanged.

"Painting for royal dishes" Is an invaluable monument. It makes it possible with historical accuracy to restore the Russian cuisine of wealthy people of the pre-Petrine era. We owe his appearance to the head of Sytny Dvor, boyar B.M. Khitrovo, with clerks.

EM Velichko - Russian folk cuisine. Photo Admin


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