Russian folk dishes: names, history, photos

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Our cuisine is considered one of the most satisfying, delicious and rich in the world. The ancestors knew a lot about food and loved a good table. They gathered to him five or six times a day. Everything depended on the time of year, the length of daylight hours and economic needs. And it was called - interception, afternoon snack, lunch, paobed, dinner and pauzhin. Interestingly, this tradition was sacredly observed until the abolition of serfdom. With the advent of capitalism, the number of daily meals was reduced first to three times, and then to two.

The main ingredients of Russian cuisine

Russian folk dishes have always been very diverse. The menu of the ancestors contained cereals, and meat, and fish, and vegetables, and mushrooms, and berries, and fruits. They also knew how to make butter. By the way, flaxseed oil was not eaten. It was used as a base for paints. Fragrant nut oils from cedar and hazel were quite popular, and food was flavored with hemp, mustard, or poppy seeds. In general, vegetable oil in the diet did not occupy such a large place as at present. But the flour was of different grades andspecies.

Historic changes

After the adoption of Orthodoxy, Russian folk dishes became even more diverse. No wonder. If meat, milk, eggs, fish and vegetable oil are forbidden for more than half of the days of the year, you have to be creative.

After long fasts, the Russians happily indulged in modest feasts, since they bred a lot of livestock, and the hunting grounds were teeming with living creatures - hares, pheasants, partridges, ducks, capercaillie, hazel grouse, black grouse. They hunted bears, deer, elks, wild boars. The accession of the lands has updated Russian folk national dishes a lot and has considerably expanded our menu. A lot of new things were introduced into the diet of compatriots by the tsar-reformer - Peter 1. He started the tradition of making butter from cream and sour cream, as is customary in Holland. He owns the introduction of new crops into the crop rotation and the ban on the cultivation of amaranth, which is currently known as amaranth.

The way of life in Russia has been repeatedly updated, traditional Russian folk dishes have also changed. The history of the country with a range of everyday traditions is beautifully described in essays on Russian antiquity by Mikhail Ivanovich Pylyaev, Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovskiy, Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov, Ariadna Vladimirovna Tyrkova-Williams.

Famous Russian dishes

Traditions have changed, but some preferences have stood the test of time. Russian folk dishes such as cabbage soup, pancakes,borscht, porridge, kulebyaka, pie, jelly, okroshka, kvass, sbiten, mead, etc. Fish, mushrooms, cereals are the most commonly cooked foods.

Smoking our ancestors did not know. It came to Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Meat and fish were boiled, baked, stewed, s alted, fermented, dried or eaten raw, in the form of stroganina. Sturgeon, sterlet, beluga were by no means the diet of the rich alone. The most delicious fish soup, aspics or pies made from noble fish were also eaten by ordinary people. Pancakes with black caviar, pies with hare, stellate sturgeon jelly, porridge with melted cream foam - these are all traditional Russian folk dishes. The list is far from definitive. Too little chronicle information has survived to this day. More or less complete evidence dates back to the 9th century.

Schi and Russian stove

Schi is a universal dish that is well known to visitors to Russian restaurants abroad. The correct pronunciation of this word even became a kind of entertainment. In German, for example, as many as 8 letters are used to designate the letter combination "shchi". Of these, 7 are consonants. Try to fluently pronounce a combination of seven consonants and one vowel at the end several times.

Schi can be boiled in vegetable, mushroom, meat, fish broth. Sour cabbage soup is cooked from sauerkraut or brine from other vegetables. Russian folk cuisine did not subject the dishes to stepwise heat treatment. If cabbage soup, borsch, porridge, etc. were cooked, then no products for them were fried separately, as is customary now. Orboiled or baked. Cooked in a large stone oven. The dish did not come into contact with an open fire. It seemed to be languishing at a constant or slowly decreasing temperature from all sides, and not just from below. This gave the food a special taste, structure and texture. The food was not brought to a boil. Other indicators were more significant - before bread, that is, very high heat, after bread - that is, at a lower temperature and in a free spirit. The food was cooked for a long time. Any cabbage soup or porridge that had been steamed in a hot oven for several hours acquired an absolutely amazing taste, and the beneficial substances were much more fully preserved during such processing.

It is impossible to reproduce the taste that distinguished Russian folk dishes on an electric or gas stove. Their names are in old cookbooks - these are kalya, tyurya, zatiruha, nanny, kurnik, kulaga, m alt, logaza, zhur, mess, tumbler, gamula, vole, krupennik, oatmeal, etc.

Tolokno

Oatmeal is a specially prepared flour made from oats or barley that can be used in a variety of dishes. The grain cleaned from the hard husk is steamed, dried, calcined and ground into flour. Oatmeal flour is poured with hot milk, water, broth, decoction of berries, vegetables or fruits. It does not form gluten, but swells and thickens very well. Cooking or boiling oatmeal is not necessary. This flour contains a large amount of lecithin, which is destroyed at high temperatures. Oatmeal was sometimes thickened with cabbage soup and Kalya. Oatmeal porridgelard was included in the diet of the soldier's menu. Oatmeal was mixed with berries and placed in the oven for several hours. The berries were given juice, soaked in flour and baked. It turned out to be a delicious treat that was eaten with honey.

Kalya

In modern terms, calla is a fish soup, more precisely, a hodgepodge. However, the old kalya was made in brine from sauerkraut or cucumbers. It was allowed to add kvass to the brine. The fish was taken from sturgeon species, with caviar. Often prepared on one black caviar. Kalya was distinguished by a very rich broth with a spicy taste. At other times, it was made from ducks, black grouse or quails. Cooked in the oven for several hours, it turned out to be incredibly fragrant, and the bones of the game were boiled to a soft state. Spicy herbs such as dill, cumin, horseradish, mustard, etc. were grown in vegetable gardens. Our ancestors skillfully used fragrant herbs, but over time, many secrets have sunk into oblivion, as spices brought from East Asia have taken the place of domestic herbs.

Currently, kalju can be made from catfish or halibut and cod roe. Pickle is suitable from barrel cucumbers, cabbage, olives, watermelons or other fruits. It is important that it does not contain vinegar and preservatives.

Kurnik

This is an old festive Russian folk dish. The recipe involves yeast or unleavened dough. Previously, small pies were made, which were stuffed with porridge, mushrooms, fish, vegetables and combined into one large pie. In the Russian ovenbaked very well, it turned out juicy and lush. Not a single wedding was complete without a chicken. It was also used to predict the future. Depending on who got what filling, interpretations were made.

Okroshka

Okroshka was prepared mainly in the summer. It is a cold dish similar to soup. It is based on kvass and finely chopped fresh vegetables. Modern okroshka is made not only on kvass, but also on kefir. In addition to cucumbers, green onions, radishes, eggs, boiled meat is put in it, seasoned with sour cream and flavored with a lot of salad greens - dill, parsley, etc.

Honey

There has always been a lot of honey in our country. It was exported in large quantities. Before the advent of sugar, food was only sweetened with honey. They cooked berries with it for the winter, made drinks. Honey was not subjected to heat treatment, as they knew about the great he alth benefits of this product. Drinks from it were made warm or cold.

Water was boiled in a samovar and herbs were infused in it. Such decoctions were used everywhere. Linden flowers, chamomile, Ivan-tea, viburnum, raspberries, strawberries and other plants were collected and dried in the summer. Explosions on honey according to old recipes are back in vogue.

Jelly and jelly

Foreigners noted that cold dishes are very good in Russia - jelly and jelly. They were cooked from sturgeon fish. In winter, the meat-eater was made from suckling pigs and poultry. Beef for foodthey practically did not use it, since the earth was plowed on the bulls, and the cows gave milk. Pork was also not very favored. Chickens and ducks laid eggs. The main supplier of meat was the forest. Game was the main meat during non-fasting periods. Jellies and jellies were seasoned with sauces of horseradish, mustard, vinegar and s alt.

Fish

Sturgeons were taken from the White Sea in winter on sledges to central Russia. The caviar of this fish was not a delicacy. Both the poor and the we althy ate it in large quantities. In large barrels it was taken abroad. Fresh caviar was eaten with vinegar and s alt.

Smelt was baked until crispy in the oven and served on the same dish. It was baked so that the bones and fins became very soft and invisible.

Sturgeon vyaziga was used to make fillings for pies. The vyaziga was taken out, cleaned and dried. As needed, they soaked it, cut it and, mixing it with porridge, made pies. Rybniki, or fish pies, were made from raw fish.

Ukha from sterlet, stellate sturgeon, sturgeon or beluga was made on a complex broth. First, they boiled small river fish, which were not cleaned, and after cooking they were thrown away. This broth, or yushka, served as the basis for the royal fish soup.

Russian folk dishes were not prepared from the slaughter, obtained by women. Also, living creatures that feed on carrion, that is, crayfish, were not suitable for food.

After Peter the Great's reforms and the emergence of a "window to Europe", wine and sugar began to be imported to Russia. A trade route was laid through the country from China and Indiato Europe. So we got tea, coffee, spices, etc.

Along with them came new traditions, but Russian folk dishes, photographs of which are presented in the article, are still loved and in demand. If you cook them in the oven or slow cooker, they will look a bit like the authentic ones.