One day I recently inspected the refrigerator and found a small jar of home-canned sorrel there. And I realized that the time had come again for Russian cuisine and William Pokhlebkin. Long live green cabbage soup, healthy and tasty!

In general, cabbage soup is perhaps one of the central dishes of Russian cuisine for more than a thousand years. Most of the Russian proverbs and sayings are dedicated to them (“Shchi and porridge is our food”, “The world stands on cabbage soup”). Well, maybe porridge can compete. What is the secret of such popular love and longevity of this dish?

Pokhlebkin explains this by saying that cabbage soup does not get boring, even if you eat it every day for a long time. In principle, there is truth in this, because there are so many varieties of them, from “empty” to “rich,” not counting regional ones!.. It seems to me that there would be more than enough for a year, or even more.

It is generally accepted that cabbage soup is a special cabbage soup (in English and German, cabbage soup is called “cabbage soup”), but cabbage is an optional, although the most popular component of cabbage soup. The main thing is the presence of acid, and it can be provided by sorrel, nettle, pickled mushrooms and even apples and traditional sour cream dressing.

Today I have a cabbage-free (and even potato-free) recipe. And this is also cabbage soup. Green, healthy, tasty, sorrel-like, just right for spring. And, probably, the first moderately satisfying dish of Russian cuisine in my memory. Simple in composition and method of preparation, for spring vitaminization and unloading - just right!

A few comments on preparation:

We will need (about 3 liters per pan):

Source: V. Pokhlebkin, Cuisines of Slavic peoples

Preparation:
1. Cut the brisket into portions and fill with water. Cut one onion into several parts and place it in a saucepan along with the peel. We set the broth to cook, bring it to a boil, reduce the heat and forget about it for three hours.




2. When the broth is ready, catch the onions and peels. We won't need them anymore. If desired, the broth can be strained.

3. Finely chop the onion, and chop the roots (carrots, parsley, celery) into strips.




4. Bring the finished broth to a boil, add onions and roots, add pepper and bay leaf and cook for 10-15 minutes.




5. Add the sorrel and cook for a few minutes.


6. Peel the garlic and crush it with a knife, add it to the cabbage soup. We also send chopped dill there. Boil everything for 2-3 minutes.


7. We clean the boiled eggs and chop them finely. Pour the cabbage soup into plates, season with sour cream and eggs.

William Pokhlebkin. Recipes for our life

In March 2000, under mysterious circumstances, the famous scientist William Pokhlebkin was killed at the door of his apartment.
The newspapers were full of scandalous headlines, but Pokhlebkin’s life was no less mysterious than his tragic death.
At thirty-seven years old, William Vasilyevich became a famous historian of the twentieth century. However, it was recognized only abroad. He spoke seven languages, but found himself “restricted from traveling abroad.” At the age of forty, Pokhlebkin was left without a penny of money and was doomed to starvation. At forty-five, a treasure “fell” on his head. At sixty, the whole world started talking about him as a brilliant cook, and at seventy-six, his mutilated body was discovered in his own apartment.
Why was the historian, cook, journalist, who devoted his entire life to his native country, not loved by the authorities?
And who could be behind his death?

The mystery of the death of cook Pokhlebkin

Some thought he was crazy. Others argued that he was a hidden dissident who consciously lived his life outside the state, outside the system. Still others said that he exchanged his unique research talent for some nonsense - writing culinary recipes, books about food and gastronomic tips for housewives.

Those who thought so were wrong. The culinary talent and intelligence of William Pokhlebkin turned out to be in demand. His works became a kind of school of tasty and healthy national food in the USSR. His recipes gave thousands of ordinary Soviet people the opportunity to try themselves in the art of cooking and experience the joy of creativity in their own kitchen.

Director: Vera Kilchevskaya
Scriptwriter: Alexander Krastoshevsky

William Vasilievich Pokhlebkin

Was born: August 20, 1923, Moscow
Died: March 2000, Podolsk, Moscow region

• Shakotis

Biography

Pokhlebkin William Vasilievich(August 20, 1923 - end of March 2000) - Soviet, Russian scientist, historian, geographer, journalist and writer. Author of famous cookery books. Expert in the history of diplomacy and international relations, heraldry and ethnography.

V.V. Pokhlebkin is widely known, in particular, for his cookbooks, which are fascinating and contain a lot of historical and interesting little-known information.
His books on cooking, “Secrets of Good Cuisine” and “National Cuisines of Our Peoples,” contain not strict recipes, but methods for preparing various dishes, including those that have long been forgotten. To some extent, these books are also historical, as they contain information about the history of various dishes and cooking in general. Among professionals, he is known as the first theoretical chef in history, who gave world cuisine a universal classification based on technology.
A book about tea - “Tea: Its types, properties, use” - is revered by many lovers of this drink.
The book “The History of Vodka” was translated into English and is known throughout the world (en: A History of Vodka).

William Pokhlebkin: top recipes of Russian cuisine

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; people still learn to cook Russian cuisine using his recipes. Woman's Day collected the most famous dishes of William Pokhlebkin.

Rich cabbage soup (full): recipe

Ingredients:

750 g beef, 500-750 g or 1 half-liter jar of sauerkraut, 4-5 dry porcini mushrooms, 0.5 cups salted mushrooms, 1 carrot, 1 large potato, 1 turnip, 2 onions, 1 celery root and greens, 1 parsley root and greens, 1 tbsp. spoon 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 (zori).

Place the beef, along with the onion and half of the roots (carrots, parsley, celery) in cold water and cook for 2 hours. 1-1.5 hours after the start of cooking, add salt, then strain the broth, discard the roots.

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

Place the mushrooms and potatoes cut into four pieces in an enamel saucepan, add 2 cups of cold water and put on fire. When the water boils, remove the mushrooms, cut into strips and place in the mushroom broth to finish cooking. After the mushrooms and potatoes are ready, combine with the meat broth.

To the combined broth and cabbage, add finely chopped onion, all other roots, cut into strips, and spices (except garlic and dill), add 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, top with coarsely chopped salted mushrooms and sour cream directly in the plates.

Jelly: recipe

Ingredients:

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

Scorch the legs and head, clean, cut into equal pieces, add water and cook for 6 to 8 hours over 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; add a little salt. Then remove the meat, separate from the bones, cut into small pieces, place in 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 hour to an hour (so that its volume does not exceed 1 liter), add salt, strain and pour it over the boiled prepared meat. Let cool 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 of well-fed beef (thick edge), 1 carrot, 2 onions, 1 parsley or celery, 6-8 grains of black pepper, 3-4 bay leaves, 2 tsp. ginger, 0.5 cups sour cream, 1 tsp. salt, 1-1.5 cups of kvass.

Wash the beef, remove films and bones, cut off the fat, cut it into small pieces, put it on a preheated frying pan or baking sheet, melt it, heat it, fry the beef in it in a whole piece until crusty, sprinkling with finely chopped carrots, onions, parsley and crushed spices, then place in the oven, baste every 10 minutes. little by little with kvass, turning all the time. Fry for about 1-1.5 hours. For 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, and put it in the refrigerator. When the juice has cooled, remove the layer of fat from the surface, heat the juice, strain, add sour cream. Serve as a sauce for roasts. Remove the finished beef from the oven, add salt, let it cool slightly (15 minutes), then cut across the grain into pieces, pour over hot meat juice and serve.

Roasts are not served cold or heated. The side dish 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.

Clean the pike, rub it with pepper outside and inside, pour it over with oil and place the whole thing in a deep frying pan on a ceramic stand (or a saucer) and place it in the oven uncovered for 7-10 minutes until the fish browns. Then transfer to a smaller bowl, pour in sour cream, half covering the pike with it, close with a lid and place in the oven over low heat for 45-60 minutes. Place the finished fish on a dish, pour over lemon juice, and heat the resulting gravy on the stove until thickened, add salt, season with grated nutmeg and zest and serve separately with the fish in a sauce boat or pour it over the fish.

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 cups sour cream, 0.5 tsp. ground black pepper.

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

During 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 l of water, 0.5 l of milk, 2 tsp. salt, 3 tbsp. l. butter.

Pour water over the cereal and cook over low heat until the water has boiled down and completely thickened, then add hot milk in two additions and, continuing to stir, cook until thickened, adding salt. Season the finished porridge with oil.

Cabbage pie: recipe

Yeast puff pastry

Ingredients:

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

When 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: nut, poppy - cardamom, apple - cinnamon, cherry - star anise, currant, strawberry - zest).

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

Cabbage filling

You can prepare the filling from either fresh or stewed cabbage.

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

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

Buckwheat-wheat pancakes: recipe

Homemade rusk kvass: recipe

Ingredients:

1 kg of rye crackers (preferably different ones - from Oryol, rye and Borodino bread, but not peeled), 750 g of sugar, 10-15 blackcurrant leaves, 50 g of raisins, 2-3 tbsp. l. liquid brewer's yeast or 25 g baker's yeast, 2 tbsp. l. dry mint (not peppermint).

Dried in the oven until lightly crusted, pour 1 bucket of boiling water over the crackers and leave for 12 hours. Separately brew the mint, separately the currant leaf with a liter of boiling water and leave for 5 hours. Pour the kvass infusion into another container after soaking, add to it the strained infusion of mint and currant leaf , sugar boiled in 0.5 liters of water, and yeast, stir and leave to ferment for 4 hours. Then remove the foam, strain, pour into bottles, adding a few raisins to each, and leave for 2 days to stand in the cold.

You can prepare a basic summer soup using homemade kvass. We recommend a quick okroshka recipe.

Honey gingerbread (homemade)

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. spoon of burnt sugar, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 2 capsules of cardamom, 4 clove buds, 0.5 tsp. star anise, 1 tsp. lemon zest, 0.5 tsp. soda

Boil the honey in a saucepan over low heat until red-hot, removing the foam, then brew some of it into rye flour and mix with the rest of the honey, cool until lukewarm and beat until white.

Grind the buttermilk with the yolks, add milk and knead the wheat flour into the egg-milk mixture, after mixing it and mixing it with the powdered spices.

Combine the honey-rye mixture with sour cream and the above mixture, whisking them thoroughly. Place the finished dough in a greased form (or baking sheet) in 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 turns beige or light brown. At the same time, the sugar should not burn; the smell should be specifically caramel, not burnt. This is achieved by careful, continuous stirring and adjusting the heat. The resulting light brown candy is used to tint and add a “caramel” aroma to products.

Russian cuisine has long been widely known throughout the world. This is manifested in the direct penetration into international restaurant cuisine of native 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 at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. became so diverse, and its influence and popularity in Europe were so great that by this time they started talking about it with the same respect as the famous French cuisine.

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

Old Russian cuisine, which developed from the 9th-10th centuries. and which reached its greatest flourishing in the 15th-16th centuries, although its formation covers a huge historical period, it is characterized by general features that have largely been preserved to this day.

At the beginning of this period, Russian bread from sour (yeast) rye dough appeared - this uncrowned king on our table, without it even now the Russian menu is unthinkable - and also all the other most important types of Russian bread and flour products arose: the familiar saiki, bagels, sochni, pyshki, 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 predilection for sour and kvass was also reflected in the creation of Russian real jelly - oatmeal, wheat and rye, which appeared long before modern ones. Mostly berry jelly.

Various gruels and porridges, which were originally considered ritual, ceremonial food, also occupied a large place on the menu.

All this bread and flour food was varied most often with fish, mushrooms, wild berries, vegetables, milk and very rarely meat.

The appearance of classic Russian drinks - all kinds of honey, kvass, sbitney - dates back to the same time.
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 (milk-egg-meat) was evident, which had a huge impact on its further development until the end of the 19th century. The artificial creation of a line between the fast and fast table, the isolation of some products from others, and the prevention of their mixing ultimately led to the creation of only a few original dishes, and the entire menu suffered - it became more monotonous and simplified.
We can say that the Lenten table was luckier: since most days of the year - from 192 to 216 in different years - were considered fast (and these fasts were observed very strictly), there was a natural desire to expand the range of the Lenten table. Hence the abundance of mushroom and fish dishes in Russian cuisine, the tendency to use various plant materials - grain (porridge), vegetables, wild berries and herbs (nettle, snot, quinoa, etc.). Moreover, they have been so famous since the 10th century. vegetables such as cabbage, turnips, radishes, peas, cucumbers were prepared 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, beet salad, potato salad, etc. Each type of mushroom - milk mushrooms, mushrooms, honey mushrooms, white mushrooms, morels, pecheritsa (champignons), etc. d. - 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 come across juicy, “tasty” names for fish dishes: sigovina, taimenina, pike, halibut, catfish, salmon, sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, beluga and others. And the fish soup could be perch, ruff, burbot, sterlet, etc.

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

In the initial period of the development of Russian cuisine, there also developed a tendency to consume liquid hot dishes, which then received the general name “bread”. The most widespread types of bread are such as cabbage soup, stews based on vegetable raw materials, as well as various mash, brews, chatterboxes, salomat and other types 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 cooked in cabbage soup or gruel, and milk was drunk raw, stewed or sour. Cottage cheese and sour cream were made from dairy products, and the production of cream and butter remained almost unknown for a long time, at least until the 15th-16th centuries. These products appeared rarely and irregularly.

The next stage in the development of Russian cuisine is the period from the middle of the 16th century. and until the end of the 17th century. At this time, not only further development of variants of the Lenten and Fast table continues, but also the differences between the cuisines of different classes and estates are especially sharply outlined. From this time on, the cuisine of the common people began to become more and more simplified, the cuisine of the boyars, nobility and especially the nobility became more and more refined. It collects, combines and generalizes the experience of previous centuries in the field of Russian cooking, creates on its basis new, more complex versions of old dishes, and also 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 paid to the fast festive table of that time. Along with the already familiar corned beef and boiled meat, spun (i.e., cooked on spits) and fried meat, poultry and game occupy a place of honor on the table of the nobility. Types of meat processing are becoming increasingly differentiated. Thus, beef is used mainly for preparing corned beef and for boiling (boiled slaughter); Pork is used to make ham for long-term storage, or it is used as fresh meat or suckling pig in fried and stewed form, and in Russia only meat, lean pork is valued; finally, lamb, poultry and game are used mainly for roasting and only partly (lamb) for stewing.

In the 17th century All the main types of Russian soups finally took shape, while kalia, pokhmelki, solyanka, and rassolniki, unknown in medieval Rus', appeared.

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 milk of poppy seeds.

On the cookery of the 17th century. Oriental and primarily 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 made from unleavened dough (noodles, dumplings), products such as raisins, apricots, figs (figs), as well as lemons and tea, the use of which has since become traditional in Russia, came into Russian cuisine. Thus, the sweet table is significantly replenished. Next to gingerbread, known in Rus' even before the adoption of Christianity, one could see a variety of gingerbreads, 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 17th century. Cane sugar (1) began to be brought to Russia, from which, together with spices, they made candies and snacks, sweets, delicacies, fruits, etc. But all these sweet dishes were mainly the privilege of the nobility (2).

The boyar table is characterized by an extreme abundance of dishes - up to 50, and at the royal table their number grows to 150-200. The size of these dishes is also enormous, for which the largest swans, geese, turkeys, the largest sturgeons or belugas 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 and fantastic animals of gigantic proportions are built from food products. Court dinners turn into a pompous, magnificent ritual, lasting 6-8 hours in a row - from two o'clock in the afternoon to ten in the evening - and include almost a dozen courses, each of which consists of a whole series (sometimes two dozen) of dishes of the same name, for example from a dozen varieties of fried game or salted fish, from a dozen types of pancakes or pies (3).

Thus, in the 17th century. Russian cuisine was already extremely diverse in the range of dishes (we are, of course, talking about the cuisine of the ruling classes). At the same time, the art of cooking in the sense of the ability to combine products and bring out their taste was still at a very low level. Suffice it to say that mixing of products, chopping, grinding, crushing them was still 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, pates and cutlets. All kinds of casseroles and puddings turned out to be alien to ancient Russian cuisine. The desire to prepare a dish from a whole large piece, and ideally from a whole animal or plant, persisted until the 18th century. The exception, it seemed, was the fillings in pies, in whole animals and poultry, and in their parts - rennet, caul. 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 flattened, but not crushed. And only much later - at the end of the 18th century. and especially in the 19th century. - already under the influence of Western European cuisine, some fillings began to be specially crushed.

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 19th century. At this time, there was a radical demarcation between 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 folk cuisine was expressed only in the fact that in terms of quality, abundance and range of products and dishes it was sharply superior to folk cuisine, then in the 18th century. The cuisine of the ruling classes gradually began to lose its Russian national character. Since the times of Peter the Great, the Russian nobility and the rest of the nobility have borrowed and introduced Western European culinary traditions. Rich nobles visiting Western Europe brought foreign chefs with them. At first these were mostly Dutch and German, especially Saxon and Austrian, then Swedish and mainly French. From the middle of the 18th century. foreign cooks were hired so regularly that they soon almost completely replaced the cooks and serf cooks of the upper nobility.

One of the new customs that appeared at this time is the use of snacks as an independent dish. German sandwiches, French and Dutch cheeses that came from the West and were hitherto unknown on the Russian table were combined with ancient Russian dishes - cold corned beef, jelly, ham, boiled pork, as well as caviar, balyk and other salted red fish in a single serving or even in a special meal - breakfast. New alcoholic drinks also appeared - ratafia and erofeichi. Since the 70s of the 18th century, when tea began to become increasingly important, in the highest circles of society, sweet pies, pies and sweets were separated from lunch, which were combined with tea in a separate serving and dedicated to 5 o’clock in the evening.
Only in the first half of the 19th century, after the Patriotic War of 1812, in connection with the general rise of patriotism in the country and the struggle of Slavophile circles against foreign influence, advanced representatives of the nobility began 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 admit that “information about Russian dishes has almost completely disappeared” and therefore “it is now impossible to provide a complete description of the Russian cookery and should be content with only by what can still be collected from what remains in memory, for the history of the 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 recipes, but also in their assortment they did not reflect all the actual richness of the dishes of the Russian national table.

The cuisine of the ruling classes and throughout the first half of the 19th century. continued to develop in isolation from folk cuisine, 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 native Russian ones, in the first half of the 19th century. a different process emerged - the processing of the Russian culinary heritage, and in the second half of the 19th century. The restoration of the Russian national menu is even beginning, albeit again with French adjustments.

During this period, a number of French chefs worked in Russia, radically reforming the Russian cuisine of the ruling classes. The first French chef to leave a mark on the reform of Russian cuisine was Marie-Antoine Carême - one of the first and few research chefs and chef-scientists. Before arriving in 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 became familiar with Russian cuisine in detail, appreciated its merits and outlined ways to free it from superficiality. Karem's successors in Russia continued the reform he began. This reform affected, firstly, the order of serving dishes to the table. Adopted in the 18th century. The "French" system of serving, when all dishes were put on the table at the same time, was replaced by the old Russian method 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 lunch, in which heavy dishes alternated with light ones that stimulated the appetite. In addition, meat or poultry cooked whole was no longer served on the table; they began to be cut into portions before serving. With such a system, decorating dishes as an end in itself has lost all meaning. The reformers also advocated replacing dishes made from crushed and pureed products, which occupied a large place in the cuisine of the ruling classes in the 18th - early 19th centuries, with dishes made from natural products more typical of Russian cuisine. This is how all kinds of chops (lamb and pork) from a whole piece of meat with a bone, natural steaks, clops, splints, entrecotes, escalopes appeared. At the same time, the efforts of culinary specialists were aimed at eliminating the heaviness and indigestibility of some dishes. So, in cabbage soup recipes, they discarded the flour flavor that made them tasteless, which was preserved only by tradition, and not by common sense, and began to widely use potatoes as side dishes, 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 sour rye. They also introduced a straight method of preparing dough using pressed yeast, which we use today, thanks to which sour dough, which previously required 10-12 hours to prepare, began to ripen in 2 hours. French chefs also paid attention to snacks, which became one of the specific features Russian table. If in the 18th century. The German form of serving snacks predominated - sandwiches, then in the 19th century. they began to serve appetizers on a special table, each type on a special dish, decorating them beautifully, and thus expanded their range so much, choosing among the appetizers a whole range of ancient Russian not only meat and fish, but also mushroom and pickled vegetable dishes, that their abundance and diversity henceforth never ceased to be a constant object of wonder to foreigners.

Finally, the French school introduced the combination of products (vinaigrettes, salads, side dishes) and precise dosages in dish recipes, which had not previously been accepted in Russian cuisine, and introduced Russian cuisine to unknown types of Western European kitchen equipment.

At the end of the 19th century. The Russian stove and pots and cast iron specially adapted to its thermal conditions were replaced by a stove with its oven, pots, saucepans, etc. Instead of a sieve and sieve, colanders, skimmers, meat grinders, etc. began to be used.

An important contribution of French culinary specialists to the development of Russian cuisine was that they trained a whole galaxy of brilliant Russian chefs. Their students were Mikhail and Gerasim Stepanov, G. Dobrovolsky, V. Bestuzhev, I. Radetsky, P. Grigoriev, I. Antonov, Z. Eremeev, N. Khodeev, P. Vikentiev and others, who supported and spread the best traditions of Russian cuisine to throughout the entire 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. Petersburg and Moscow, there was another process - the collection, restoration and development of forgotten ancient Russian recipes, which spontaneously took place in the provinces, in the landowners 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 unknown, but talented serf cooks took part.
By the last third of the 19th century. Russian cuisine of the ruling classes, thanks to its unique assortment of dishes and their exquisite and delicate taste, began to occupy, along with French cuisine, one of the leading places in Europe.
At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize that, despite all the changes, introductions and foreign influences, its main characteristic features have been preserved and remain inherent to it to this day, since they have been firmly retained in folk cuisine. These main features of Russian cuisine and the Russian national table can be defined as follows: the abundance of dishes, the variety of the snack table, the love of eating bread, pancakes, pies, cereals, the originality of the first liquid cold and hot dishes, the variety of fish and mushroom table, the widespread use of pickles from vegetables and mushrooms, an abundance of festive and sweet table with its jams, cookies, gingerbreads, Easter cakes, etc.

Some features of Russian cuisine should be said in more detail. Back at the end of the 18th century. Russian historian I. Boltin noted the characteristic features of the Russian table, including not only the wealthy. In rural areas, there were four meal times, and in the summer during working hours - five: breakfast, or snack, afternoon tea, before lunch, or exactly at noon, lunch, dinner and supper. These vyti, adopted in Central and Northern Russia, were also preserved in Southern Russia, but with different names. There, at 6-7 a.m. they ate, at 11-12 they had lunch, at 14-15 they had an afternoon snack, at 18-19 they had an evening meal, and at 22-23 they had dinner. With the development of capitalism, working people in cities began to eat first three, and then only two times a day: they had breakfast at dawn, lunch or dinner when they came home. At work, they only ate midday, that is, they ate cold food. Gradually, lunch began to be called any full meal, a full table with hot brew, sometimes regardless of the time of day.
Bread played a big role at the Russian table. For cabbage soup or another first liquid dish in the village, they usually ate from half a kilo to a kilogram of black rye bread. White bread, made from wheat, was actually not widespread in Russia until the beginning of the 20th century. It was eaten occasionally and mainly by the wealthy segments of the population in cities, and among the people they looked at it as a holiday food. Therefore, white bread, called bun (5) in some regions of the country, was baked not in bakeries, like black bread, but in special bakeries and was slightly sweetened. Local varieties of white bread were Moscow saiki and kalachi, Smolensk pretzels, Valdai bagels, etc. Black bread differed not by place of production, but only by the type of baking and type of flour - pecked, custard, hearth, peeled, etc.
Since the 20th century Other flour products made from white, wheat flour, previously not typical of Russian cuisine, came into use - vermicelli, pasta, while the consumption of pies, pancakes and porridges decreased. Due to the spread of white bread in everyday life, drinking tea with it sometimes began to replace breakfast and dinner.
The first liquid dishes, called from the end of the 18th century, retained constant 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 in our country before the fork by almost 400 years. “With a fork you can fish, and with a spoon you can fish with a net,” said the popular proverb.

The assortment of national Russian soups - cabbage soup, zatirukh, pottage, fish soup, pickles, solyanka, botvinya, okroshka, prison - continued to expand in the 18th-20th centuries. various types of Western European soups such as broths, puree soups, various filling 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 found a place on the modern Russian table, for example, Ukrainian borscht and kulesh, Belarusian beetroot soups and soups with dumplings. Many soups, especially vegetable and vegetable-cereal soups, were obtained from liquefied gruels (i.e., gruels with vegetable filling) or represent the fruits of restaurant cuisine. However, it is not they, despite their diversity, but old, native Russian soups like cabbage soup and fish soup that still determine the uniqueness of the Russian table.

To a lesser extent than soups, fish dishes have retained their original meaning on the Russian table. Some classic Russian fish dishes like telny have fallen out of use. Meanwhile, they are tasty and easy to prepare. They can be prepared from sea fish, which, by the way, was used in Russian cuisine in ancient times, especially in Northern Russia, in Russian Pomerania. Residents of these grainless areas in those days have long been accustomed to cod, halibut, haddock, capelin, and navaga. “Lack of fish is worse than lack of bread,” was the saying of the Pomors at that time.

Known in Russian cuisine are steamed, boiled, whole fish, i.e. made in a special way from one fillet, boneless, fried, mended (filled with porridge or mushroom filling), stewed, jellied, baked in scales, baked in a frying pan in sour cream , salted (salted), dried and dried (suschik). In the Pechora and Perm regions, fish was also fermented (sour fish), and in Western Siberia they ate stroganina - frozen raw fish. The only uncommon method was the method of smoking fish, which developed mainly only over the last 70-80 years, i.e., from the beginning of the 20th century.

Characteristic of ancient Russian cuisine was the widespread use of spices in a fairly large assortment. However, the reduction in the role of fish, mushroom and game dishes, as well as the introduction of a number of German cuisine dishes into the menu, affected the reduction in the share of spices used in Russian cuisine.
In addition, many spices, due to their high cost, as well as vinegar and salt, have been used since the 17th century. People began to use re in the process of cooking, and put it on the table and use it during meals, depending on everyone’s desire. This custom gave rise to later claims that Russian cuisine supposedly did not use spices. At the same time, they referred to the famous work of G. Kotoshikhin about Russia in the 17th century, where he wrote: “There is a custom of cooking without seasonings, without pepper and ginger, lightly salted and without vinegar.” Meanwhile, the same G. Kotoshikhin further explained: “And when the nets begin and in which there is little vinegar and salt and pepper, they add them to the food on the table” (6). Since those distant times, the custom has remained to place salt in a salt shaker, pepper in a pepper shaker, mustard and vinegar in separate jars on the table during meals. As a result, folk cuisine never developed the skills of cooking with spices, while in the cuisine of the ruling classes, spices continued to be used in the cooking process. But Russian cuisine knew spices and seasonings back in the days of its formation; they were skillfully combined with fish, mushrooms, game, pies, soups, gingerbreads, Easter cakes and Easter cakes, and they were used carefully, but nevertheless constantly and without fail. And this circumstance must not be forgotten or overlooked when talking about the peculiarities of Russian cuisine.

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

For a long period of development of Russian national cuisine, the process of cooking was reduced to boiling or baking products in a Russian oven, and these operations were necessarily carried out separately. What was intended for cooking 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. Thermal processing of food consisted of heating the Russian oven with heat, strong or weak, in three degrees - “before the bread”, “after the bread”, “in a free spirit” - but always without contact with the fire and either with a constant temperature kept at the same level, or with falling, decreasing temperatures as the oven gradually cooled, but never with increasing temperatures, as with stovetop cooking. That’s why the dishes always turned out not even boiled, but rather stewed or half-steamed, half-stewed, which is why they acquired a very special taste. It is not without reason that many dishes of ancient Russian cuisine do not make the proper impression when they are prepared in different temperature conditions.

Does this mean that it is necessary to restore the Russian stove in order to obtain real Russian cuisine in modern conditions? Not at all. Instead, it is enough to simulate the thermal regime of falling temperature it creates. 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 also a negative impact on Russian cuisine - it did not stimulate the development of rational technological techniques.
The introduction of stove-top cooking led to the need to borrow a number of new technological techniques and, along with them, dishes from Western European cuisine, as well as to the reform of dishes of ancient Russian cuisine, their refining and development, and adaptation to new technology. This direction turned out to be fruitful. It helped save many Russian dishes from oblivion.

Speaking about Russian cuisine, we have so far emphasized its features and characteristic features, considered 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 associated 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, money with cottage cheese and a lot of mushrooms, on the Don they fry and stew steppe game, eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, drink grape wine and make pies with chicken. If the food of the Pomors is similar to Scandinavian, Finnish, Karelian and Lapp (Sami), then the cuisine of the Don Cossacks was noticeably influenced by Turkish and Nogai cuisine, and the Russian population in the Urals or Siberia follows Tatar and Udmurt culinary traditions.

Regional features of a different kind have long been 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 differences, such as differences in cooking technology or the presence of their own dishes in each region, as was the case, for example, in Siberia and the Urals, but in differences precisely between the same dishes, in differences are often even insignificant, but nevertheless quite persistent. A striking example of this is such common Russian dishes as fish soup, pancakes, pies, porridge and gingerbread: they were made throughout European Russia, but each region had its own favorite types of these dishes, its own minor differences in their recipe, its own appearance , your serving techniques, etc.
We owe this, so to speak, “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 further enriched Russian cuisine and diversified it. And at the same time, all of them did not change its basic character, because in each specific case, the general features noted above attract attention, which together distinguish national Russian cuisine throughout Russia from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean.

Cabbage soup RICH (FULL) (Pokhlebkin)

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

1. Place the beef along with the onion and half the roots (carrots, parsley, celery) in cold water and cook for 2 hours. 1-1.5 hours after the start of cooking, add salt, then strain the broth, discard the roots.
2. Place sauerkraut in a clay pot, pour 0.5 liters of boiling water over it, add butter, close, and place in a moderately heated oven. When the cabbage begins to soften, remove it and combine with the strained broth and beef.
3. Place the mushrooms and potatoes cut into 4 parts into an enamel saucepan, add 2 cups of cold water and put on fire. When the water boils, remove the mushrooms, cut them into strips and put them back into the mushroom broth to finish cooking. After the mushrooms and potatoes are ready, combine with the meat broth.
4. To the combined broth and cabbage, add finely chopped onion and all other roots, cut into strips, and spices (except garlic and dill), add 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, top with coarsely chopped salted mushrooms and sour cream directly in the plates.

3. BAD SPIRIT

What is the symbol of the Russian feast? Vodka? Gefilte fish? Fight? Of course not. There is only one dish without which Russian cuisine is unthinkable, like an emigrant newspaper without the Kremlin elders. This is cabbage soup. They contain our culture and history. It’s not for nothing that cabbage soup is respectfully referred to not as “you”, but as “them”, in the plural.

During the first thousand years of Russian history, cabbage soup was the main, and often the only dish on the Russian peasant table. Then both the cabbage soup and the peasants fell into decline. Gradually, this dish slipped to the level of a poor soup and, as such, significantly compromised Russian cuisine. If the house smells of cabbage soup, it means that uncultured, backward people live here. And once upon a time, the spirit of life meant the Russian version of homeliness and comfort. “The Russian spirit is here! It smells like cabbage soup here!” the great poet wrote.

Of course, to enjoy cabbage soup, you don’t have to wear a shirt and bast shoes. It is enough to cook these cabbage soup correctly. Which is not easy, but exciting.

Put the marrow bones and a good piece of beef into the pan (in no case pork - this will be an extraneous Ukrainian influence, which is equally disgusting to us as Russians and as Jews). Fill with water and cook until half cooked. Place the squeezed sauerkraut in the pot, pour boiling water over it and season with two tablespoons of butter. Place the covered pot in the oven over low heat and keep there until the cabbage is soft. This will give the cabbage soup a stewed taste that can otherwise only be achieved in a Russian oven. Since even the president does not have a Russian oven in America, the operation with cabbage is inevitable. Separately, cook two or three dry mushrooms along with cut potatoes.

Now you need to combine all the ingredients (cabbage, mushrooms and potatoes along with the water in which they were boiled) and put finely chopped onions, carrots, turnips, parsley roots and greens, celery roots and greens, a few black peppercorns (crushed) into the cabbage soup. two or three bay leaves, a teaspoon of marjoram, salt and let cook for about 20 minutes. Then remove from heat, season with garlic and dill and put the pan in a heated oven for half an hour.

Before serving, it’s good to put coarsely chopped salted mushrooms in the cabbage soup (we can’t imagine where you’ll get them) and be sure to add whitewash made from a mixture of sour cream and cream to the plate. Aesthetes can add finely chopped ham to the cabbage soup along with the roots, but this is from the evil one.

You need to eat cabbage soup with a huge amount of fresh black bread, cut into slices as thick as your hand. No second one is prepared on this day. May God help you cope with this first. The big problem is the consistency of the cabbage soup. They must be very thick so that a spoon can stand. But this recommendation, like others like it - “salt to taste, cook until tender” - does not help the cook much. On the other hand, a reasonable person must have innate intuition and a sense of proportion. And there is no need for anyone else to cook cabbage soup. In cooking he will get by with a hamburger, in art with a TV, in sports with a fool.

MY KITCHEN

Chapter 1. SOUPS

One of the most constant, indispensable elements of my kitchen, as mentioned above, are soups, that is, all types of first hot liquid dishes: cabbage soup, borscht, various types of fish soups (ukha, kalya, solyanka, fish-dairy, fish-vegetable and fish and cereal soups), meat, vegetable and sweet soups.

I consider soup to be a main dish, extremely necessary physiologically for all people, and especially for children, the elderly, women in certain phases of their lives, as well as people who do hard physical work or have too much emotional and intellectual stress.

There are quite enough extreme situations in our lives today, and yet the second half of the 20th century is marked by an increasing reduction in soups in people’s diets, especially in the USA and Western Europe. The standard diet created by the Western European and American catering network actually completely excludes soups from the diet of students, businessmen, athletes, security guards, trade and service workers, as well as industrial workers.

The fashion for sandwiches, the so-called “buffet”, for the consumption of “quick food” - “fast food” - has also captured Russia in the last decade. The liquids that accompany the absorption of such food are drinks that are increasingly not organically related to it - from mineral water and synthetic “water” to weak and strong alcoholic drinks, and the share of alcoholic drinks is constantly increasing sharply, which is quite physiologically explainable - beer , vodka and whiskey more actively promote the processing of “solid food”, create less inconvenience for the consumer of modern food, since from a culinary point of view they are more suitable from a culinary point of view for sausage, frankfurters, ham, bacon than hot coffee or tea, not to mention purely “technical” » the convenience of drinking alcohol and the expenditure of minimal time. (A shot of vodka “takes” a second of time to absorb it, and a glass of tea, even prepared somehow, not according to all the rules, if it is still hot, takes up to 15-20 minutes.)

However, no one thinks about this and does not take into account the negative health consequences that occur 15-20 years after the systematic consumption of dry food and alcoholic beverages. Meanwhile, the increase in cardiovascular, gastric and nervous diseases, not to mention the kidneys and liver, is directly related to the refusal of the vast majority of people to consume soups, one of the functions of which is the systematic washing of the body. Eating “greens”, “fruits”, “vitamins” and the like is not capable of creating an adequate physiological replacement for soups and, of course, will not change the current situation with the deterioration of people’s health.

Soups still remain the main and respected dishes only in some national exotic cuisines, for example, Uzbek, Armenian, Chinese, where they constitute the most important element of food. And this fact largely explains the current popularity of Chinese cuisine in Western Europe and the USA.

For Russia, which until the Second World War occupied first place in the world in the number of types of soups (Russian cooking), and even more so in the number of types of soups consumed throughout the country (USSR), since, in addition to Russian cuisine, peoples had their own original soups Moldova, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Baltic states, the shift away from soup cuisine at the end of the 20th century is a dramatic phenomenon for two reasons.

Firstly, before our eyes, a completely new generation is being created that does not know about the existence of many soups, does not understand their taste and therefore does not consume soups, which serve as the main condition for the prevention of gastroenteric diseases in childhood and adolescence, diseases (once they have arisen), tending to become incurably chronic in adulthood and old age.

Secondly, the national way of nutrition, which is more adequate to the conditions of our country, is being eliminated, and the ethnic and national identity of the population is being lost. And this, in the most unpredictable way, may already in the next two to three decades affect changes in the physical and mental make-up of the population.

What this will lead to - only God knows.

Since the process of soups losing their culinary positions is international in nature, in the last two to three years a number of prominent European culinary experts have called for the return of soups to their former high status, characteristic of the beginning of the 20th century, in the period before the First World War.

On the one hand, the largest French professional chefs prepare soups in the most expensive, elite restaurants intended for the elite. Traditional small restaurants with five or six tables appear or continue to exist, where they serve only one or two dishes, namely soups, of very high quality and at a very high price. In other words, they want to preserve soups by turning them into the culinary elite, by including them as an endangered rarity in a kind of culinary Red Book. This is one way: soups will be consumed by a very select public, but not by the masses.

Another path taken by Scandinavian (especially Swedish and Finnish) culinary specialists from the organization of food quality control in the country is the dissemination of recipes for ancient national soups of the 19th century and calls on the population not to use concentrates for making broths and soups, but to cook these dishes from raw foods personally.

It must be said that Sweden, like France in the 18th century, was considered a country where there were the best masters in preparing real soups. True, the ambassadors of Tsarina Elizabeth Petrovna looked for a cook who could prepare up to a dozen different soups for several years and managed to contract a craftswoman from Gothenburg for only five years, after which they had to part with her with regret and the problem of preparing delicious soups for the Tsarina arose again.

The latest edition of the main French culinary reference book “Larousse de la Cousine” and the Swedish popular “New Bonnier Cookbook” strongly and persistently recommend preparing homemade soups, give authoritative recipes, and place colorful, spectacular photographs of soups, although previously most illustrations in cookbooks were reserved for more beautiful and photogenic confectionery or snacks.

The efforts made at the end of the 20th century by the most enlightened culinary specialists and culinary societies in order to save soups, retain and restore their place and importance in the menu of large restaurants and especially in the household of the population, are explained by the fact that it was the professionals who came to the sad conclusion about the loss qualified personnel for preparing soups, even in first-class establishments. It turns out that soups are more difficult to prepare than meat and fish dishes, and you need to have a certain talent for this.

And it is all the more difficult to restore personnel because there are only one or two teachers left, and the number of old people is limited. They simply slept through the disappearance of soups and soup specialists, and now they have come to their senses, but... it’s too late.

This is how things are in Europe. In America, the complete absence of soups in the diet of the majority of the population does not bother the public or professionals. The soups there have long since died out.

In the Anglo-Saxon world, soups are preserved only in Scotland. In England, culinary hygienists encourage the consumption of porridge in the name of improving the health of the table. People are also calling for porridge in Scandinavia, especially in Denmark and Norway, where they see this food product as almost a panacea against the appearance of gastrointestinal diseases among young people.

Porridge, of course, is easier to prepare from a culinary point of view, and besides, they are also a kind of “solid food”. It’s more difficult with soups.

But porridges have a significant drawback in that they become boring faster and in themselves are not so much tasty as healthy. And this argument has less effect on the emotions of a potential eater than taste.

That is why soups still have a chance to restore their position, provided that the urbanization of society and the ever-accelerating pace of life do not completely close the opportunity for new generations to personally prepare soups and thus appreciate them adequately.

It is important to reverse the emerging psychology of using everything ready-made and relying on tablets, cubes, concentrates and similar artificial foods. This problem is in full force in our country, especially since we do not have organizations and enthusiasts who would advocate for the restoration of the status of soups in the family and in public catering, as a nationally proven and medically necessary form of nutrition, and a pleasant, tasty one at that.

Meanwhile, the level of preparation of soups even in the best Russian restaurants is currently so low that they are not in demand among visitors and are therefore excluded from the menu altogether. One of the reasons for this is that in the 90s, most of the chefs in the best Moscow and St. Petersburg restaurants were foreigners, mostly Germans and Italians, whose national cuisines hardly knew soups, especially good ones.

As for Russian cuisine, in its modern execution there is too much artificial, far-fetched, which does not belong to it, and therefore the main national dish - soups, which form a whole range of dishes of ten types, are not at all known to young Russian culinary specialists, and not only professionally. technologically, but even in name!

For example, a simple look at the menus of five to six dozen Moscow restaurants showed that even in such basic types of Russian soups as cabbage soup and ukha, our restaurants are shamelessly confused.

It’s incredible, but nowadays in restaurants they don’t know how to distinguish, for example, fish soup from fish soup, they don’t understand the difference between them. In the same way, the technology for preparing soups itself is so stagnant that they continue to be served according to the simplified canons of Soviet public catering, without any consideration of their historical recipes and technology.

I really love soups. And eat and cook. Below are some of the types of soups that I prepare for myself and have recorded their recipes. The reader will find here purely vegetable soups, which are not particularly held in high esteem among us and which are especially difficult to make tasty. Then there are several options for fish soups, which differ sharply from the canonical Russian fish soup (recipes for fish soup are given in detail in my book “National Cuisines of Our Peoples” and therefore, of course, are not repeated here). Finally, there is an example of a “new” soup, or rather borscht, which uses a meat component, but does not give that harmful “meat fat” that frightens people who fear sclerosis.

Chapter 1. SOUPS

Chapter 2. porridge in a new way

Chapter 3. SECOND DISHES

Chapter 4. SWEET DISHES

Chapter 5. ABOUT SNACKS AND GASTRONOMIC COMPOSITION OF A MODERN COLD TABLE

Fish snacks

Snacks from new products

Section: William Vasilievich Pokhlebkin
"NATIONAL COOKES OF OUR PEOPLES"
6th page of the section

Russian kitchen
HOT SOUPS

Shchi has been the main liquid hot dish on the Russian table for more than a millennium. It has been steadily preserved in different eras, although tastes have changed, and has never known social barriers; it was used by all segments of the population. Of course, cabbage soup was not the same for everyone: some, fuller in composition, were called “rich”, while others were called “empty”, since they were sometimes cooked from only cabbage and onions.

However, with all the numerous variations from “rich” to “empty” and with all the regional (regional) varieties of cabbage soup; The traditional method of preparing them and the associated taste and aroma have always been preserved.

Of great importance for creating the special, unique taste of cabbage soup was the fact that they were prepared and then simmered (infused) in a Russian oven. The indestructible aroma of cabbage soup - the “shchi spirit” - has always lingered in the Russian hut. Russian sayings were associated with the meaning of cabbage soup in everyday life: “Shchi is the head of everything,” “Shchi and porridge are our food,” etc.

The amazing longevity of cabbage soup can be explained, perhaps, by their inaccessibility. Cabbage soup does not get boring when eaten frequently. They can be eaten almost every day at any time of the year.

Cabbage soup in its most complete version consists of six main components - cabbage (or the leading vegetable mass replacing it), meat (or, in very rare cases, fish, mushrooms - dried and salted), roots (carrots, parsley root), spicy dressing (onion, celery, garlic, dill, pepper, bay leaf) and sour dressing (sour cream, apples, cabbage brine). Of these six components, the first and last, i.e. the vegetable leading mass and the sour dressing, are indispensable and absolutely mandatory. The simplest cabbage soup can consist only of them, continuing to remain cabbage soup.

As for the leading vegetable mass in cabbage soup, most often it is cabbage - fresh or pickled. But this does not mean that cabbage soup is soup with cabbage. A sign of cabbage is acid, most often created by brine of sauerkraut (either as part of cabbage or in its pure form) or, instead, sorrel (green cabbage soup), boiled green, wild or Antonov apples, salted mushrooms, as well as sour cream (in cabbage soup from fresh cabbage). That is why cabbage can be replaced in cabbage soup with various green, sour or neutral masses (sorrel, sorrel, nettle, hogweed - in the so-called green borscht cabbage soup), as well as a neutral vegetable mass that absorbs acid well (turnip or radish - in the so-called turnip cabbage soup ).

The technology for preparing all types of cabbage soup is the same. First, meat or mushrooms are boiled separately with roots and onions. Then cabbage or its substitutes and acid are added to the finished broth. If sauerkraut is used for cabbage soup, then it is cooked separately from the meat broth and combined with it after it is ready. In both cases, only after boiling the vegetable mass to the required softness, add salt and spicy dressing. Sour cream is used to season ready-made cabbage soup, most often when serving it.

Initially, flour dressing was also added to the cabbage soup (together with cabbage) to make the cabbage soup broth denser. This was usually accepted in the western and southern regions of Russia.

However, such a dressing worsens the taste of cabbage soup and coarsens its aroma. Therefore, with the advent of potatoes, in order to starch the broth, they began to add one or two potatoes to the cabbage soup - in their entirety, before adding the cabbage and sour base. Moreover, the potatoes are often then removed from the cabbage soup, since the acid causes them to harden. The consistency of the broth in lean and green cabbage soup is also thickened by adding a small amount of cereal, usually buckwheat (1 tablespoon for the whole pan), which is completely boiled.

The simpler the vegetable composition of the cabbage soup, the leaner it is, the more skill is required to prepare it. Real cabbage soup is unthinkable without a spicy dressing, which plays a significant role in creating the “shchi spirit”. First of all, adding onions to cabbage soup is of great importance. The best way is to add it twice: the first time - with a whole onion along with meat, roots and mushrooms (then this onion is removed) and the second time - with finely chopped onions (crushed) along with cabbage. At the same time, you should never add onions fried separately in oil to cabbage soup - in this form they are not characteristic of real cabbage soup.

In the same way, another spicy dressing - parsley and celery - is added to the cabbage soup twice: the first time - as a root, which is then taken out along with the onion, the second time - at the end of cooking, in the form of greens. The remaining spices - bay leaf, crushed black pepper, dill and garlic are added as follows: the first two types - 15 minutes before readiness, the second two - along with parsley at the end of cooking.

After this, the cabbage soup must stand under the lid, let it brew for at least 10-15 minutes. It is at this time that the cabbage soup “reaches its real taste”: the cabbage becomes soft, the acidity and aroma of spices are transferred to the vegetables. Therefore, in the past, cabbage soup was left to simmer and languish after cooking in the light spirit of a Russian oven, where it did not cool down, or it was set aside on the edge of the stove, where the heat was retained, but the boiling stopped. Sauerkraut cabbage soup especially needs this. It’s good to put them in a low-heat oven for 10-15 minutes, or even more.

Sometimes infusion of cabbage soup can last for several hours (from 12 to 24), which is why they acquire a better and more distinctive taste. Such cabbage soup is called daily cabbage soup; it is prepared in advance, a day in advance.

Finally, you should pay attention to two more circumstances that affect the quality of cabbage soup - the choice of meat and whitening or whitening.

The cabbage soup is made from beef, mainly fatty beef - brisket, thin and thick edges, rump. To create a special smell, you can add a small amount of ham to the beef - a tenth - eighth (and in the south of Russia even a third) of the weight of the beef. In this case, the beef in cabbage soup is always boiled in a whole piece, and the ham is chopped. Only in prefabricated cabbage soup are all meat components subjected to grinding.

Cabbage soup made from only pork, found mainly in the regions of Russia bordering Ukraine, is not typical for Russian cuisine. The same can be said about cabbage soup found in some regions of Russia with fish instead of meat. Such cabbage soup once certainly required a special selection of fish (salted red fish - beluga and sturgeon, in combination with river fish - perch, crucian carp and tench) and their separate heat treatment. Another method of preparing cabbage soup with fish, and with other varieties of fish, produces a not so tasty dish, which is why it has not become widespread.

As for whitening, good cabbage soup cannot do without it. The role of whitening is usually performed by sour cream, which is also an acidifier. Sometimes sour cream is replaced with yogurt or just milk. In rich sauerkraut cabbage soup, the whitening is a mixture of sour cream and cream in a 4:1 ratio. This is a very tasty whitewash.

A few words about the consistency of cabbage soup. Cabbage soup of all types can be thick or liquid, depending on the ratio of water and the mass of the products included. Once upon a time, thick cabbage soup was considered ideal, in which “a spoon stands”, or “cabbage soup with a slide,” that is, when a piece of meat rises above the surface of liquid and thickening poured into a plate.

Our recipes are designed for cabbage soup of more than medium thickness; this means that the amount of liquid per 1 serving should not exceed 350 g. Therefore, no more than 2 liters of cold water should be poured into 4 servings, and preferably 1.5 liters, so that the finished broth is 1.25 liters (after boiling). Cook for 2 hours. Spices are added to the cabbage soup 5-10 minutes before it is ready.

Cabbage soup is usually eaten with black or rye bread.

Cabbage soup RICH (FULL)

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

1. Place the beef along with the onion and half the roots (carrots, parsley, celery) in cold water and cook for 2 hours. 1-1.5 hours after the start of cooking, add salt, then strain the broth, discard the roots.
2. Place sauerkraut in a clay pot, pour 0.5 liters of boiling water over it, add butter, close, and place in a moderately heated oven. When the cabbage begins to soften, remove it and combine with the strained broth and beef.
3. Place the mushrooms and potatoes cut into 4 parts into an enamel saucepan, add 2 cups of cold water and put on fire. When the water boils, remove the mushrooms, cut them into strips and put them back into the mushroom broth to finish cooking. After the mushrooms and potatoes are ready, combine with the meat broth.
4. To the combined broth and cabbage, add finely chopped onion and all other roots, cut into strips, and spices (except garlic and dill), add 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, top with coarsely chopped salted mushrooms and sour cream directly in the plates.

Prefabricated cabbage soup

:
250 g beef, 200 g lamb, 100 g ham, 100 g chicken, 100 g duck or goose, 500-700 g sauerkraut, 2 onions, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, 1 parsley, 1 tbsp. spoon of dill, 1 teaspoon of marjoram, 3 bay leaves, 4 cloves of garlic, 10 black peppercorns, 100 g of sour cream.

Prepare according to the previous recipe, i.e., the meat or cabbage parts are first cooked separately, then, after bringing the meat to half-cookedness, they are combined. Each type of meat is cut into 4 pieces.
Spices are added 10 minutes before the cabbage soup is ready.

Lenten cabbage soup

:
500-750 g sauerkraut, 5-6 dry porcini mushrooms, 1 tbsp. spoon of buckwheat, 2 onions, 1 potato, 1 carrot, 1 turnip or rutabaga, 1 parsley, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of dill, 3 bay leaves, 4 cloves of garlic, 8 black peppercorns, 100 g sour cream, 1-2 tbsp. tablespoons of poppy, sunflower or olive oil.

1. Pour 0.5 liters of boiling water over the sauerkraut and place in a clay pot in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Then pour the broth into a separate enamel or earthenware bowl, salt the cabbage, mix with finely chopped onion, moisten with prepared flavored (7) vegetable oil and rub in an enamel bowl with a wooden spoon so that the oil is completely rubbed in. Then combine again with the broth and continue cooking on the stove.

(7) To flavor, the oil is heated (but not fried) in a frying pan or saucepan and coriander, anise, fennel, dill or celery and parsley seeds are added to it.

2. Prepare 1 liter of mushroom broth as indicated in step 3, combine the broth with cabbage, adding buckwheat to it, and continue cooking until the cabbage is ready.

SIMPLE MEAT cabbage soup

:
500 g beef shank, 100 g ham, 500-750 g sauerkraut, 100 g sour cream, 1 carrot, 1 parsley, 2 onions, 1-2 potatoes, 3 bay leaves, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of dill, 8 black peppercorns.

Pour boiling water over beef and ham, add onion, potatoes and part of the roots (entirely), cook for 1.5 hours until the meat is half cooked. Then add cabbage, grated with salt and chopped onion, the rest of the roots, cut into strips, and continue cooking for another 1 hour.

DAILY cabbage soup

Prepare it in the same way as simple meat cabbage soup, but without potatoes. Add spices partially - without parsley, dill and garlic. After cooking, wrap the cabbage soup in something warm, and after 3-4 hours put it in the cold for one day.
The next day, reheat, add spicy herbs and garlic, sour cream.

LAZY SHIPPING SHIPPING (OR RAW (8))

(8) Sometimes the name “Rakhmanovsky” is used incorrectly. In fact, the word “rahmanny” means “lazy, rustic, sluggish” (in Old Russian). In the old days, Rakhman cabbage soup was cooked from fresh greens (snyti) or cabbage, sometimes with fish, then Rakhman cabbage soup, quickly prepared from non-acidic green ingredients, was called Rakhman cabbage soup from the late 19th - early 20th centuries. They began to be called lazy and were cooked only from fresh cabbage.

:
500 g beef brisket (but a vegetarian version is more common), 750 g fresh cabbage (head), 3 onions, 1 carrot, 1 potato (halved), 1 parsley (root and greens), 1 celery (root and greens), 2 tbsp. . tablespoons dill, 1 teaspoon marjoram, 2 bay leaves, 10 black peppercorns, 8 cloves garlic, 200 g sour cream, 1 tomato.

1. Cook broth from meat, as usual for cabbage soup, with onions and roots, potatoes for 2 hours, strain.
2. Peel the cabbage head from the outer leaves, cut out the stalk without disturbing the integrity of the head of cabbage, put it in cold, lightly salted water for 30 minutes. Then remove, scald with boiling water and cut into large squares (2x2 cm).
3. Place the prepared cabbage, chopped onion, tomato cut into 4 pieces and the remaining roots cut into strips in the prepared meat broth, add salt and continue to cook until the cabbage and roots are ready over moderate heat. Season with spices and sour cream.

SOUR SHIPPING FROM FRESH CABBAGE

:
500-750 g beef brisket, 500-750 g fresh cabbage (a small head or half a head), 6-8 small green unripe apples of any variety, 2 onions, 0.5 turnips, 2 tbsp. tablespoons dill, 3 bay leaves, 8 black peppercorns, 100 g sour cream.

Cook the usual meat broth for cabbage soup (see previous recipes).
When the meat is almost ready, add cabbage, cut into squares (1x1 cm), finely chopped onion, roots, after 15 minutes of cooking, add apples cut into strips, and after another 5 minutes - spicy herbs and cook until the apples are completely boiled .
You can boil the apples separately in an enamel saucepan and pour this broth (1 glass) into the almost ready cabbage soup.
These cabbage soup can be prepared without meat.

GRAY cabbage soup (seedlings)

:
500 g beef, 100 g ham, 750 g cabbage seedlings, 1 cup nettles (scalded), 2 hard-boiled eggs, 2 onions, 1 parsley, 2 tbsp. spoons of dill, 6 peas of black pepper, 4 peas of allspice, 100 g of sour cream, 0.5 teaspoon of citric acid.

1. Prepare meat broth for cabbage soup (see above).
2. Free the leaves of the seedlings from the roots and stems, chop them finely and then scald them with steep salted boiling water, cover them and leave them in it for 10-15 minutes. Then fold it back and add it to the meat broth.
3. Rinse the nettles with cold water, pour over boiling water, drain in a colander and quickly, without allowing them to release juice, chop finely and add to the meat broth.
4. Continue cooking the cabbage soup after adding cabbage and nettles along with spices for another 10-15 minutes. Then remove from heat, season with dill, garlic, citric acid, and let it brew. Serve with sour cream and hard-boiled egg (half per serving).

GREEN cabbage soup

:
500 g beef brisket, 0.75 liter jar of sorrel, 2 onions, 1 carrot, 1 parsley, 1 celery, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of dill, 10 black peppercorns, 3 bay leaves, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 hard-boiled eggs, 100 g sour cream.

1. Cook meat broth as indicated in previous recipes.
2. Rinse the sorrel thoroughly in cold water, remove the stems, finely chop and place in the prepared boiling meat broth. At the same time, add finely chopped onion, chopped roots, spices, except garlic and dill, and cook for 10-15 minutes until the sorrel darkens. Add garlic and dill 2 minutes before the end of cooking. When serving, top with sour cream and finely chopped eggs.
Note. Green cabbage soup can be prepared without meat. In this case, sorrel, roots and spices are added to 1.25 liters of boiling salted onion broth, into which another 1 tbsp is poured. spoon of rice and 1 tbsp. spoon of buckwheat. Cook for 15 minutes.

Nettle cabbage soup

:
4 cups scalded nettle, 2 tbsp. spoons of buckwheat (kernels), 1 tbsp. spoon of rice, 1 potato, 2 eggs, 0.5 teaspoon of citric acid, 1 parsley, 1 celery, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of dill, 8 black peppercorns, 100 g sour cream, 1.25 liters of water.

1. Put spicy vegetables, finely chopped onions, cereals into boiling salted water or ready-made meat broth and boil for 10-12 minutes.
2. Then add nettles prepared as follows. Remove the leaves of young nettle (the top three or four leaves), rinse thoroughly several times in cold water, scald with boiling water, quickly drain in a colander, not allowing the nettle to release juice, and immediately chop finely. Boil nettles in broth for 10-12 minutes.
3. Remove the cabbage soup from the heat, season with garlic, dill, citric acid, and let it brew.

burdock cabbage soup

:
500 g beef brisket, 100 g ham, 500 g turnips, 1 rutabaga, 1-1.5 cups cabbage brine, 2 onions, 1 parsley, 8 black peppercorns, 1 teaspoon marjoram, 4 cloves garlic, 2 tbsp. spoons of dill, 100 g of sour cream.

Prepared like simple meat soup. Turnips and rutabaga, cut into strips, are placed in the prepared meat broth along with cabbage brine and cooked until the vegetables are soft.

Stews are the first hot dishes, which are essentially strong vegetable broths. Unlike soups and cabbage soup, prepared with meat broths, stews are light soups based on water and vegetables (9).

(9) Therefore, in principle, the sometimes found restaurant name for the first course is incorrect - meat (or chicken) stew.

In stews, one vegetable component always predominates, after which they are called: onion, potato, turnip, swede, lentil, etc. Preference is given to tender vegetables that do not require long cooking and have their own characteristic aroma.

Never use beans, beets, or sauerkraut in stews.

The composition of the stews necessarily includes onions and spices, the selection of which is different for each type of stew. Spicy parsley, dill and celery, as well as garlic are the most common ingredients.

The stew should be salted carefully and in different ways depending on the main vegetable component: potato - at the beginning of cooking, lentil - after the end of cooking, the rest - during the cooking process.

A characteristic feature of the technology for preparing stews is that the vegetables are not placed in cold water, but always in boiling water (you can also dissolve finely chopped onions in it).

Despite the apparent ease and speed (they cook for about 20-30 minutes), preparing stews requires special attention and skills, and greater care when processing vegetables.

It is necessary to preserve and bring to the table the light aroma of the stew, the smell of which can be damaged by insufficiently washed or poorly peeled vegetables. You need to know the order of adding and cooking time for vegetables and spices. The stew cannot be overcooked, because then all the flavor will disappear and the broth will become cloudy. Real stews are always transparent, and each has its own color. Unlike soups themselves, they are prepared without fats, without oil, like pure vegetable broths. Subsequent whitening with sour cream, and more often with cream, is allowed. But whitening, and even more so the addition of butter, even butter, still changes the taste of the stew.

They eat stews with black rye bread, preferably completely fresh, and immediately after cooking, hot.

It is not recommended to leave the stew for another day and reheat it.

ONION STAGE

:
1.25 liters of water, 4-6 onions, 1 leek, 1 parsley, 1 celery, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of dill, 4-6 black peppercorns, 1 teaspoon of salt.

Cut the roots into strips and place in boiling water. Chop the onions and leeks finely (but not into rings), grind with salt in a porcelain bowl and add to the boiling broth. Put pepper.
When the onion has blossomed and the broth turns green, add salt, add chopped spicy herbs and after 3 minutes remove from heat. Close and let sit for 5 minutes.

POTATO STAGE

:
1.5 liters of water, 5-6 potatoes, 1 onion, 0.5 heads of garlic, 3 bay leaves, 1 tbsp. spoon of dill, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of parsley, 6-8 black peppercorns.

Place chopped onion and diced potatoes in salted boiling water and cook until the potatoes are ready. Add spices and herbs 5-7 and 2 minutes before readiness, respectively.

BURDEN STAGE (BURNID)

:
1.5 liters of water, 5-6 turnips, 1 small rutabaga, 1 onion, 2 Jamaican (allspice) peppercorns, 2 clove buds, 4 black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves, 1 tbsp. spoon of parsley, 1 tbsp. spoon of dill, 4 cloves of garlic.

Cook in the same way as potato soup. Add spices 10 minutes before, and spicy herbs 2-3 minutes before readiness.

Lentil stew

:
1.5-1.75 liters of water, 1 cup lentils, 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 parsley, 3 bay leaves, 6 black peppercorns, 0.5 heads of garlic, 1 tbsp. spoon of savory greens.

Soak the lentils for a day in cold water. Before cooking, rinse again, add cold water and place on moderate heat. When it boils, add the chopped roots and cook until the lentils are completely cooked (1.25-1 liters of liquid should remain).
Then add the onion and other spices, except garlic and savory, add salt and cook over very low heat for another 10-12 minutes, then season with garlic and savory, remove from heat and let steep for 5-8 minutes.

Ukha is a liquid hot fish dish, which, however, would be incorrectly called fish soup. The name "ukha" was assigned exclusively to fish broth only from the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries. In the XI-XII centuries. “Ukha” was also a name for meat broth in the 16th-17th centuries. - from chicken.

However, already from the 15th century, ukha increasingly began to be made from fish, which, better than other products, made it possible to create a dish that was fundamentally different from other liquid dishes on the Russian table. The fish soup has turned into an instant dish, with a clear liquid similar to broth, so it cannot be seasoned, like fish soup, with oil, cereal, flour, overcooked onions, etc.

Over the course of centuries, completely definite rules for preparing fish soup have developed regarding the selection of fish varieties, utensils, the quantity and composition of vegetables and spices, the order of laying and cooking time.

So, the fish soup should be cooked in a non-oxidizing container (enamel, clay). Classic Russian fish soup is made from those fish that produce a clear broth and are distinguished by their stickiness, tenderness and “sweetness.” These are pike perch, perch, ruff, whitefish - they make the best, so-called white fish soup. They usually add one third of burbot, catfish, tench or ide. In second place in taste are fish soup made from asp, carp, chub, cheese, crucian carp, carp, rudd. The fish soup from these fish is called black. Finally, red fish soup - sturgeon, beluga, stellate sturgeon, nelma, salmon - is called red fish soup, or amber fish soup, when it is especially fatty and is made with saffron. In addition to these types of fish soup, classical Russian cuisine knows ordinary fish soup, baked fish soup, flaccid fish soup, plastered fish soup and sweet fish soup.

Fish soup is usually not made from just one type of fish, but from at least two and at most four. An exception may be red fish soup, which is also cooked from one type of fish. Regional varieties of fish soup occupy a special place - fish soup made from sterlet (sterlet, Volzhskaya), fish soup from smelt (Chudskaya, Pskovskaya) and fish soup (10) together with salted saffron milk caps - the so-called Lachskaya (Lazhskaya) or Onezhskaya fish soup.

(10) Sushchik - small perches, ruffs, smelts dried in a Russian oven.

Roach, bream, gudgeon, bleak, roach, ram, as well as herring of all types, mackerel, sabrefish, and gobies are not suitable for fish soup. They are best used for making fish soups.

There is an opinion that good fish soup cannot be prepared from sea fish. This is not true. Many of the sea fish are well suited for cooking fish soup due to their qualities. These are cod, halibut, macrorus, notothenia, sablefish, vomer, icefish, squama, sea bass. Cod and halibut, for example, were previously used to prepare Pomeranian (Arkhangelsk) fish soup.

Usually, they try to prepare fish soup from freshwater fish immediately after catching it. The fresher the fish, the tastier the fish soup. This fully applies to sea fish. Therefore, if it is frozen, then for better preservation of freshness it should not be thawed before putting it in the ear. You should also choose younger, smaller fish for your fish soup, also trying to take the tail part that is less susceptible to spoilage. The most successful combination for fish soup is a combination of lean fish (cod, ice cod, macrorus, vomer) with fatty fish (halibut, sea bass, squama, notothenia).

A minimum of vegetables is placed in the ear - a small amount of potatoes (not crumbly, sweet varieties), carrots and always onions. If fish soup is prepared from live fish, then only onions are placed in it. If you use fresh, but already dormant fish, then vegetables must be added. In addition, they add a fairly large set of spices: parsley (root and greens), leeks, green onions, dill, black pepper, bay leaves, tarragon, parsnips, and in some types of fish soup they add saffron, nutmeg, ginger, anise, fennel. Typically, the range of spices depends on the type of fish - the fattier the fish, the more spices are required for the fish soup.

To create the unique taste and aroma of fish soup, it is extremely important to follow the correct cooking mode. First of all, for fish soup, you need to prepare a broth - a boiling, salted vegetable broth, into which the fish is dipped for a short time (from 7 to 20 minutes). The main goal of preparing the broth is to create an environment for the fish in which it would not be completely boiled, that is, it would remain tasty and juicy.

Previously, for this purpose, small fish, as well as heads and bones, were first completely boiled in the broth, which were then thrown away, and the broth was filtered and clarified with egg white extract. And only then pieces of larger fish or fillets, intended to be eaten with fish soup, were boiled in this fish broth. Later, the broth began to thicken by boiling potatoes in it.

This technique is more suitable for preparing sea fish soup.

The duration of cooking fish depends entirely on the type of fish: freshwater fish is cooked for 15-20 minutes (and fish from Siberian rivers 25-30 minutes), sea fish - 8-12 minutes. Overcooking sea fish deteriorates the quality of the fish meat, makes it tough and worsens the taste of the broth itself, which becomes less sweet and less aromatic.

You should also pay attention to the fact that the fish soup will turn out much tastier if you cook it without a lid, in an open container and over moderate or low heat.

An indicator of the readiness of the fish soup is the slight separation of the fish meat from the bones, and an indicator of good quality is the transparency of the broth, its delicate aroma, and the bright whiteness of the fish meat. The fish soup should not have a specific fishy smell, which fish soups often have, during cooking of which the fish is allowed to become overcooked.

They eat fish soup with black bread or with fish kulebyaka, pies filled with elm, sago, rice and eggs, onions or fish (rasstegai). Below are modern recipes for ordinary fish soup - from river and sea fish, as well as ancient varieties of Russian fish soup: national fish soup, crucian fish soup, baked fish soup, sweet fish soup, crayfish soup. The differences in their preparation are minor, but still exist.

PRIVATE EAR (FROM RIVER FISH)

:
1.5 kg of fish, 1.75 liters of water, 2 onions, 0.5 carrots (small), 1 parsley (root and greens), 1 parsnip root, 2 potatoes, 1 tbsp. spoon of dill, 3 bay leaves, 8 black peppercorns, 1 tbsp. spoon of tarragon, 2 teaspoons of salt.

Put potatoes cut into quarters, fish heads and tails, finely chopped onions, carrots and parsley cut into strips into salted boiling water and cook over low heat for 20 minutes, then skim off the foam, strain if desired, then add bay leaf, pepper, boil for more 5 minutes, increase the heat and place the fish, cleaned and cut into large pieces (4-5 cm wide), into the prepared broth, cook it over moderate heat for 15-17 minutes, without letting it boil too much.
At the end, if necessary, add salt, add parsley, dill and tarragon, remove from heat, close with a lid and let steep for 7-8 minutes.

PRIVATE EAR (FROM SEA FISH)

:
1.5 kg of fish or 1.25 kg of fillet (about 0.5 kg of cod, halibut, sea bass), 1.75 liters of water, 2 onions, 0.5 carrots, 3 potatoes, 4 bay leaves, 10-12 black peppercorns, 1 leek, 1 parsley, 2 tbsp. spoons of dill, 4-5 stamens of saffron, 2 teaspoons of salt, 4 slices (circles) of lemon.

Put diced potatoes, chopped carrots and parsley, finely chopped onions into salted boiling water, boil for 10-15 minutes over moderate heat until the potatoes are half cooked, then add all the spices except dill and part of the leek, and after 3 minutes - fish cut into large pieces and continue cooking for another 8 minutes over moderate heat. Add salt if necessary.
A minute before it’s ready, add dill and leeks.
Let it brew, add lemon (see previous recipe).

EAR TEAM

The composition of the fish soup includes river and red fish in a ratio of 2:1 or 1:1. The cooking procedure is the same as for ordinary fish soup. Among the spices, in addition to those used in ordinary river fish soup, you can add saffron and ginger (at the tip of a knife).

EAR GUARDED

Baked fish soup can be cooked in two ways.
1. Boil heads, tails, bones from cut fish for 20-30 minutes over moderate heat, strain the broth and boil large pieces of fish fillet in it for 5 minutes. Then take out the fish, dip it in an egg beaten with 1 teaspoon of flour, lightly fry (oech - hence “baked”) in a frying pan in butter and again immerse in boiling fish broth to finish cooking for another 3-5 minutes.
2. Place the fish, vegetables, and spices in a clay pot, pour boiling water over it, close it, and place in a preheated oven over high heat for 15 minutes. When the soup starts to boil, remove from the oven, add 1 tbsp. a spoonful of butter, pour 1-2 well-beaten eggs on top and put them back in the oven for 15 minutes until the eggs are completely baked (sintered).

KARASEVYA EAR

Cook in the same way as ordinary river fish soup (see above), but instead of potatoes add 2 tbsp. spoons of washed rice. First, boil the heads of the crucian carp separately, and then strain the broth and put the crucian carp into it without cutting them into pieces.
This fish soup is not salted.

EAR PLASTIC

Prepare it in the same way as ordinary fish soup, but from salted and dried fish, spread lengthwise.
Initially, such fish must be scalded with boiling water in which anise or fennel was cooked. After this, it can be placed in the ear, but not 1.5 kg, as for ordinary fish soup, but 1 kg.

EAR FLASH

Prepare in the same way as ordinary fish, but from small fish dried in the sun or from dried fish. You can add dry or fresh mushrooms to it.

EAR SWEET

Cook it like a regular river fish soup, but take twice as many carrots (a whole carrot instead of half) and cut it into small cubes. You should also increase the proportion of parsnips, and as additional spices in the broth in a gauze bag, boil for 5-7 minutes (and then remove) 1 teaspoon of anise or fennel seeds.

EAR CANCER

The fish part of this fish soup includes 2 parts of crayfish meat and 1 part of fish meat, preferably pike or other freshwater fish. Make a vegetable mixture from this mixture with the addition of onion, black pepper and 1 tbsp. spoons of wheat flour (per 1 kg of fish).
Cook the fish soup from small fresh river fish, which after boiling, remove, then strain the broth and put the body in it, with which you first fill the crayfish shells.
The addition of vegetables and spices is the same as for ordinary fish soup, with the exception of dill, which must be taken twice as much.

Kalya - common in the 16th-17th centuries. fish liquid first course. Subsequently, it gradually almost went out of use, and in some places it began to be incorrectly called fish pickle. It is prepared basically in the same way as fish soup, but pickles, cucumber pickle, lemons and lemon juice, either individually or combined, are added to the kalia broth.

A distinctive feature of kalya in the past was that usually only fatty fish, mainly red, was used for it, and along with the fish, caviar was placed in it. Currently, good kalia can be prepared from sea fish, traditionally used in the Russian North - for example, halibut, catfish, which are quite fatty and also go well with a salty-sour base.

Kalya, as a rule, contains more spices than ukha. Kalya is thicker than fish soup, the broth in it is sharper and denser in consistency, and its quantity is always less than in fish soup. Previously, kalia was considered a festive dish.

:
1.5 kg of fish, 1.5-1.75 liters of water, 2 pickled cucumbers, 1 glass of cucumber brine, 3-4 potatoes, 0.5 lemons, 2 onions, 1 leek, 1 parsley (root and greens) , 1 carrot, 10 black peppercorns, 3 bay leaves, 1 tbsp. spoon of dill, 5-6 stamens of saffron, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of fresh or 1 teaspoon of dry tarragon.

First prepare it like fish soup: prepare vegetable broth (see description of cooking fish soup), then add separately boiled cucumber brine to it, add diced pickles, then add fish, cut into large pieces.
Cook for 8 to 20 minutes depending on the type of fish (see description of cooking fish soup).
Season with spices in the same way and in the same order as the fish soup.
Finally, add dill, part of the leek, tarragon, squeeze lemon juice into the potassium that has already been removed from the heat and let it brew.

Rassolnik is a liquid hot first course with a sour and salty cucumber base. This dish finally emerged in Russian cuisine quite late - only in the middle of the 19th century, and the name “rassolnik” was assigned to it around the same time. Meanwhile, the use of cucumber pickle as a base for preparing soups has been known since at least the 15th century.

The amount of brine, its concentration and ratio with the rest of the liquid, as well as the combination with other main products of the soup (fish, meat, vegetables and cereals) were, however, so different that they gave rise to various dishes with different names: kalya, pokhmelki, solyanka and, finally, pickles. The latter began to be called moderately sour-salty soups only on a cucumber basis - vegetarian or more often with offal; By kalia it was customary to mean only slightly acidic fish soups, while pokhmelki and solyanka were more acidic and more concentrated.

Since the recipe for rassolniks was developed quite late, they included potatoes and rice, while boiled beets, which were included in the old rassolniks, were subsequently completely excluded.

Modern pickles include pickles, potatoes and other root vegetables of neutral taste (carrots, turnips, rutabaga), cereals (buckwheat, barley, pearl barley or rice), a large number of spicy vegetables and herbs (onions, leeks, celery, parsley, parsnips, dill, tarragon, savory) and some classic spices (bay leaf, allspice and black pepper).

Mostly by-products are used as meat in rassolniks - either beef or veal kidneys alone, or all offal (stomach, liver, heart, lungs, neck, legs) from poultry (chicken, turkey, duck and goose).

In the absence of by-products, they are replaced with beef meat - usually a curl or a shank (knuckle).

Grains for pickle are selected according to the meat used in it: pearl barley - for pickle with kidneys and beef, rice - for pickle with chicken and turkey giblets, barley - for duck and goose giblets, buckwheat and rice - for vegetarian pickle. In the same way, spices are selected differently for different types of pickles.

In order for pickles to have a delicate, slightly sour and slightly salted taste, they must maintain a balance between the salty part (cucumbers) and neutral absorbents (cereals, potatoes, root vegetables - 0.5 cups per 1.5 liters of soup). Therefore, pure brine is added to pickle pots rarely and in small doses - if the cucumbers themselves are not salted enough. In this case, the brine is pre-boiled before pouring into the broth.

Like most Russian soups, rassolniki are whitened with sour cream.

MEAT RASSOLNIK

:
250-300 g of kidneys, 3 pickled cucumbers, 0.5 cups of cucumber pickle, 2-3 potatoes, 1 carrot, 1 onion, 2 tbsp. spoons of pearl barley, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of dill, 1 parsley (root and greens), 1 celery (root and greens), 3 bay leaves, 6 black peppercorns, 2 Jamaican (allspice) peppercorns, 100 g sour cream.

Kidney preparation. Trim the buds from films and fat, soak in water for 6-8 hours, changing the water, boil for 20-30 minutes in boiling water, remove, cut into small slices.
Preparation of cereals. Rinse the cereal with cold water, pour boiling water in a saucepan and let it steam for 30-45 minutes, changing the boiling water.
Preparing cucumbers. Cut the skin off the cucumbers, pour 1-1.5 cups of boiling water over it and boil over low heat for 10-15 minutes, then discard the boiled skin, and dip the pulp of the cucumbers into the brine, cut lengthwise into 4 parts, and then crosswise into small slices, simmer for another 10 minutes.
Cooking pickle. Place the prepared kidneys in 1.5 liters of boiling water, boil for about 30 minutes, add chopped roots (carrots, parsley, celery), prepared cereals, after 10-15 minutes - potatoes, finely chopped onions and cook until the potatoes are ready over moderate heat. Then add the prepared cucumbers, try to see if the broth is salty enough, add brine or salt if necessary, add spices and continue cooking for another 10-15 minutes, after which, after making sure the kidneys are ready, season with spicy herbs and cook for another 3 minutes.
Top with sour cream when serving.

CHICKEN RASSOLNIK

:
Giblets from 2 chickens, 4 pickles, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, 3 tbsp. spoons of rice, 1 onion, 1 leek, 1 parsley (root and greens), 2 tbsp. spoons of dill, 1 tbsp. spoon of tarragon, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of green savory, 8 black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves, 2 cloves of garlic, 25-30 g butter.

In 1.5 liters of boiling water, put thoroughly washed and cut into small pieces chicken giblets and cook for about 1 hour, then season with roots, washed rice several times and cook until it is half cooked, skimming off the foam.
Then season with finely chopped onion and leek, as well as pepper, bay leaf and cook until the rice is ready, add prepared cucumbers (see recipe above), cook for another 5-7 minutes, add spicy herbs and cook for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and season with garlic, mashed with oil and salt.

VEGETABLE RASSOLNIK

:
3-4 pickled cucumbers, 1 potato, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, 3 tbsp. spoons of buckwheat or rice groats, 1 parsnip (root and greens), 2 onions, 1 leek, 1 parsley, 1 celery (root and greens), 8 black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves, 1 tbsp. spoon of dill, 0.5 tbsp. spoons of tarragon, 25 g butter, 100 g sour cream.

Boil vegetables and cereals in 1.5 liters of boiling water, season with separately prepared cucumbers (see recipe “Meat Pickle”) and spicy herbs.

Solyanki are thick, spicy soups that combine the components of cabbage soup (cabbage, sour cream) and pickles (pickles, cucumber pickle), with a significantly enhanced sour-salty-spicy base as a result of the addition of seasonings such as olives, capers, tomatoes, lemon, lemon juice, kvass, salted or pickled mushrooms.

Sometimes vinegar is also added to solyanka, but this coarsens their taste; such a seasoning indicates poor cooking. Solyanka comes in three types: meat, fish (with a different set of different types of meat, poultry and fish) and simple (or mushroom). The first two types are prepared, respectively, in strong meat and fish broth, the latter - in mushroom or vegetable broth. These broths are diluted with cucumber brine.

Solyanka soups, unlike solyanka soups, similar in recipe to them, which do not have liquid and are baked in frying pans, are called liquid solyanka. However, there is little liquid in liquid hodgepodge (1/3 less than in other types of soups), and this liquid is concentrated and spicy. The liquid and thick parts of the solyanka are prepared completely separately and combined 5-10-15 minutes before serving and not so much for cooking, but for heating and creating aroma.

MEAT SOLYANKA

:
1.25 liters of strong meat or bone broth, 1-2 cups of cucumber brine, 200 g of boiled beef, 200 g of fried beef or veal, 100 g of ham, 100 g of sausages, 1/4 chicken, 2 pickled cucumbers, 200-250 g fresh cabbage (about 1/4 of a small head), 2 tomatoes, 100 g sour cream, 12 olives, 1-1.5 cups salted mushrooms, 1-2 tbsp. spoons of capers, 1 onion, 1 tbsp. spoon of parsley, 1 tbsp. spoon of dill, 2 tbsp. spoons of green onions, 10 black peppercorns, 3 Jamaican (allspice) peppercorns.

1. Boil the cucumber brine and descale it. Combine the brine with the meat broth and bring to a boil.
2. Cut meat, ham, sausages, chicken fillet into small cubes.
3. Pour boiling water over salted mushrooms and fresh cabbage, then cut into cubes.
4. Cut tomatoes, cucumbers and onions into small cubes.
5. Place the products specified in points 2, 3, 4, along with spices and sour cream, in a clay pot, pour boiling broth over them and put in the oven for 10-15 minutes. In the absence of a pot, place in an enamel bowl and heat (simmer) over low heat, without letting it boil, for 10-15 minutes.

SOLYANKA FISH COMBINED

:
1.25 liters of fish broth, 1 glass of cucumber brine, 0.5-1 lemon, 500 g of fish fillet, 10-12 crayfish, 250 g of boiled salted pink salmon, chum salmon, 250 g of fresh sturgeon, 2 onions, 2 pickled cucumbers (or 10-12 gherkins), 2 tomatoes, 2 tbsp. spoons of capers, 12 olives, 1.5 cups of salted mushrooms, 1 carrot (large), 1 parsley (root and greens), 10 black peppercorns, 2 tbsp. spoons of dill, 1 tbsp. spoon of green onions, 4 bay leaves, 2 tbsp. spoons of sunflower oil.

1. Combine fish broth with separately boiled cucumber brine, add carrots and parsley cut into strips and boil over low heat.
2. Sauté finely chopped onions and tomatoes in oil. Scald the salted mushrooms and cut into cubes.
3. Cut the cucumbers into cubes, fresh fish into pieces and combine with chopped salted fish, crayfish pulp and spices with the products specified in points 1 and 2.
4. Place the dishes in the oven or on low heat for 15 minutes.
5. Before serving, squeeze lemon juice into the hodgepodge (you can cut the lemon into slices - without grains - and crush with a spoon).

SOLYANKA MUSHROOM

:
1.5 liters of water, 6-8 dry porcini mushrooms, 2 cups of salted mushrooms, 12 olives, 2 cups of finely chopped cabbage, 1.5 cups of sauerkraut, 1 carrot, 1 parsley, 2 tbsp. spoons of dill, 0.5 cups sour cream, 1 celery, 2 onions, 2 tbsp. spoons of butter, 2 tomatoes, 3 bay leaves, 10 black peppercorns, 0.5 lemon or 0.5 cups of sour kvass.

1. Prepare the mushroom broth: boil the dry mushrooms, take them out when softened, cut them into strips, put them back to cook, adding carrots, parsley, celery, cut into strips.
2. Simmer fresh and sauerkraut together with tomatoes and onions in butter until soft.
3. Scald the salted mushrooms and cut into small pieces.
4. Combine the products indicated in steps 1, 2, 3, add spices and cook for 15 minutes over moderate heat. Season the prepared hodgepodge with sour cream and lemon juice.

Noodle soup is a type of soup borrowed by the Russians from the Tatars, but received Russian processing and distribution in Russia.

Noodle soup is most often found in three types: chicken noodles, mushroom noodles, and milk noodles. Cooking all three types is extremely simple, it consists of preparing the noodles, cooking the appropriate broth and boiling the noodles in the broth. Noodles for all three types are made according to the same recipe, usually from wheat flour, as well as from a mixture of wheat and buckwheat. Mixed flour noodles go better with mushroom or milk broth. CHICKEN NOODLES

Place mushrooms in cold salted water and put on fire; When the water boils, remove the mushrooms, cut into strips, return to boil, adding finely chopped vegetables. When the mushrooms are ready, pour the noodles into the boiling broth, add pepper, bay leaf and cook until the noodles are ready over moderate heat. At the end of cooking, season with spicy herbs, garlic and sour cream.

MILK NOODLES

:
1.25-1.5 liters of milk, 0.5 cups of cream, noodles (see recipe above), 0.5 teaspoon of anise or coriander seeds, 1 teaspoon of salt.

Place anise or coriander seeds in 2-2.5 liters of boiling salted water in a gauze bag, add noodles and cook until half cooked. Then drain it in a colander, transfer it to boiling milk and cook until tender. At the end of cooking, add cream (do not bring to a boil).

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