What did our ancestors eat in Rus'. Simple folk food - customs and culture

Russian cuisine is characterized by the following features: the extreme constancy of the composition of dishes and their flavor range, strict canons of preparation. The origins of Russian cooking begin with the creation of cereal porridges, primarily oatmeal, rye and national Russian kvass (that is, sour) bread made from rye flour.

Already in the middle of the 9th century, that black, rye, spongy and baked bread appeared on leavened sourdough, without which the Russian menu is generally unthinkable.

Following him, other types of national bread and flour products were created: dezhni, loaves, juicy, pancakes, pies, pancakes, bagels, baika, donuts. The last three categories are almost a century later, after the introduction of wheat flour.

Adherence to kvass, sour was also reflected in the creation of kvass proper, the range of which reached two to three dozen types, very different in taste from each other, as well as in the invention of primordial Russian oatmeal, rye, wheat kissels, which appeared almost 900 years earlier than modern berry starch jelly.

At the very beginning of the Old Russian period, all the main drinks were formed, in addition to kvass: all kinds of perevarovs (sbitni), which were a combination of decoctions of various forest herbs with honey and spices, as well as honey and honey, that is, natural honey, fermented with berry juice or simply diluted with juices and water to a different consistency.

Kashi, although they were insipid according to the principles of their manufacture, were sometimes acidified with sour milk. They also differed in diversity, subdivided according to the types of grain (spelt, rye, oats, barley, buckwheat, millet, wheat), according to the types of grain crushing or its running (for example, barley gave three cereals: barley, Dutch, barley; buckwheat four: core , Veligorka, Smolensk, I did it; wheat is also three: whole, korkot, semolina, etc.), and, finally, by the type of consistency, for porridges were divided into crumbly, slurry and gruel (quite thin)

All this made it possible to vary from 6-7 types of grain and three types legumes (peas, beans, lentils) several dozen various cereals. In addition, various flours were made from the flour of these crops. flour products. All this bread, mainly flour food diversified mainly with fish, mushrooms, forest berries, vegetables, and less often with milk and meat.

Already in the early Middle Ages, a clear, or rather, sharp division of the Russian table into lean (vegetable, fish, mushroom) and stern (milk meat, egg) arose. Wherein Lenten table did not include all herbal products.

So, beets, carrots and sugar, which were also classified as fast food, were excluded from it. Drawing a sharp line between fasting and fasting tables, fencing off each other with an impenetrable wall of products of various origins and strictly preventing their mixing, naturally led to the creation original dishes, for example, various types of fish soup, pancakes, kundums (mushroom dumplings).

The fact that most days in a year are between 192 and 216 in different years were lenten, caused a completely natural desire for a variety of lenten table. Hence the abundance of mushroom and fish dishes in the Russian national cuisine, the tendency to use various vegetable raw materials from grain (cereals) to wild berries and herbs (snotweed, nettle, sorrel, quinoa, angelica, etc.).

At first, attempts to diversify the Lenten table were expressed in the fact that each type of vegetable, mushroom or fish was cooked separately. So, cabbage, turnip, radish, peas, cucumbers (vegetables known since the 10th century) were cooked and eaten raw, salted (pickled), steamed, boiled or baked separately from one another.

Salads and especially vinaigrettes were not characteristic of Russian cuisine at that time and appeared in Russia only in the middle of the 19th century. But they were also originally made mainly with one vegetable, which is why they were called cucumber salad, beetroot salad, potato salad, etc.

Even more differentiation was mushroom dishes. Each type of mushrooms, milk mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms, ceps, morels and stoves (champignons), etc., was not only salted, but also cooked completely separately. The situation was exactly the same with fish consumed boiled, dried, salted, baked, and less often fried.

Sigovina, taimenina, pike, halibut, catfish, salmon, sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, beluga and others were considered each individually a special, different dish, and not just fish. Therefore, the ear could be perch, ruff, burbot or sturgeon.

The taste variety of such homogeneous dishes was achieved in two ways: on the one hand, by the difference in heat and cold processing, and also through the use of various oils, mainly vegetable hemp, walnut, poppy, wood (olive) and much later sunflower, and with another use of spices.

Of the latter, onion and garlic were more often used, and in a very large quantities, as well as parsley, mustard, anise, coriander, Bay leaf, black pepper and cloves, which have appeared in Rus' since the 11th century. Later, in the 11th and early 12th centuries, they were supplemented with ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, calamus (iry root) and saffron.

In the ancient period of Russian cuisine, liquid hot dishes also appeared, which received the general name Khlebovak. Especially widespread are such types of bread as cabbage soup, stews based on vegetable raw materials, as well as various zatiruhi, zaverihi, talkers, straws and other types of flour soups, which differed from each other only in consistency and consisted of three elements of water, flour and fat. , to which sometimes (but not always) was added, onion, garlic or parsley.

They also made sour cream and cottage cheese (according to the then terminology, cheese). The production of cream and butter remained unknown until the 14th century, and in the 14th-15th centuries these products were rarely prepared and were at first Bad quality. Due to imperfect methods of churning, cleaning and storage, oil quickly goes rancid.

National sweet table consisted of berry-flour and berry-honey or honey-flour products. These are gingerbread and different types unbaked, raw, but specially folded dough (Kaluga dough, malt, kulagi), in which a delicate taste effect was achieved by long, patient and laborious processing.

The culinary traditions of the Russian people are rooted in antiquity. Even in pre-Christian Rus', when Maslenitsa was celebrated and bloodless sacrifices were made to the gods, such once ritual dishes as porridge, pancakes, spring larks and others were known. The Slavs were engaged in arable farming, growing rye, barley, wheat, oats, and millet. In the 10th century, according to travelers, the Slavs "sow millet most of all." During the harvest, they take millet grains in a ladle, raise them to the sky and say: “Lord, you who have given us food until now, give us it and now in abundance.”

Appears a little later ritual porridge- kutya. It was prepared from cereals with the addition of honey. regular porridge The Slavs cooked from flour, for which they ground grains, in water or in milk. Bread was baked from flour - first unleavened cakes, and then kalachi and pies cooked with honey.
In Rus', they were also engaged in the cultivation of garden crops. The most popular were cabbage, cucumbers, turnips, swedes and radishes.

Ancient chronicles that told about the fate of the state, wars and disasters, however, sometimes mentioned facts, one way or another related to food and nutrition.

Year 907 - in the annals, wine, bread, meat, fish and vegetables are named among the monthly tax (in those days fruits were also called vegetables).

Year 969 - Prince Svyatoslav says that the city of Pereyaslavl is conveniently located - "various vegetables" from Greece and honey from Russia converge there. Already at that time, the table of Russian princes and rich people was decorated with salted lemons, raisins, walnuts and other gifts of eastern countries, and honey was not only everyday product food, but also the subject of foreign trade.

Year 971 - during the famine, the high cost was such that a horse's head cost half a hryvnia. It is interesting that the chronicler does not speak about beef, not about pork, but about horse meat. Although the case takes place during the forced wintering of the troops of Prince Svyatoslav on the way from Greece, the fact is still remarkable. This means that there was no ban on eating horse meat in Rus', but they used it, probably, in exceptional cases. This is also evidenced by the relatively small proportion of horse bones in kitchen waste found by archaeologists.

Usually, to characterize, as we would now say "price index", the cost of products of daily demand is indicated. So, another chronicler reports that in the lean year of 1215 in Novgorod "there was a cartload of turnips for two hryvnias."

Year 996 - a feast is described, at which there was a lot of meat from cattle and animals, and bread, meat, fish, vegetables, honey and kvass were taken around the city and distributed to the people. The squad grumbled that she had to eat with wooden spoons, and Prince Vladimir ordered to give them silver ones.

Year 997 - the prince ordered to collect a handful of oats, or wheat, or bran, and ordered the wives to make "cezh" and cook jelly.

So, bit by bit, you can collect in our chronicles a lot of interesting information about nutrition in the 10th-11th centuries. Describing the simplicity of the manners of Prince Svyatoslav (964), the chronicler says that the prince did not take wagons with him on campaigns and did not cook meat, but thinly sliced ​​horse meat, beef or beast, ate them, baked on coals.

Charcoal roasting is the oldest method of heat treatment, characteristic of all peoples, and it was not borrowed by the Russians from the peoples of the Caucasus and the East, but was used from ancient times. In historical literary monuments In the 15th-16th centuries, chickens, geese, and hares are often mentioned “spinned”, that is, on a spit. But still, the most common way of preparing meat dishes was boiling and frying. large pieces in Russian ovens.

For a long time, cooking was a purely family affair. They were in charge, as a rule, of the oldest woman in the family. Professional cooks first appeared at the princely courts, and then in the monastery refectories.

Cooking in Rus' stood out as a specialty only in the 11th century, although the mention of professional chefs is found in chronicles as early as the 10th century.

The Laurentian Chronicle (1074) says that in the Kiev Caves Monastery there was a whole kitchen with a large staff of monks-cooks. Prince Gleb had an "elder cook" named Torchin, the first Russian cook known to us.

The monastic cooks were very skillful. Prince Izyaslav, who visited the borders of the Russian land, who had seen a lot, especially loved the "meals" of the Pechersk monks. There is even a description of the work of cooks of that era:

“And put on the sackcloth and sackcloth of the retinue of the votolyan, and began to create ugliness, and began to help the cooks, cooking for the brothers ... And after matins, you went to the cookhouse, and prepared fire, water, firewood, and I’ll come and take the other cook to take away.”

At times Kievan Rus cooks were in the service of princely courts and rich houses. Some of them even had several chefs. This is evidenced by the description of one of the rich man's houses of the 12th century, which mentions a lot of "sokachi", i.e. cooks, "working and doing with darkness" .

Russian chefs sacredly kept the traditions of folk cuisine, which served as the basis of their professional skills, as evidenced by the oldest written monuments - "Domostroy" (XVI century), "Painting for the royal dishes" (1611-1613), table books of Patriarch Filaret and boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov, monastic account books, etc. They often mention folk dishes - cabbage soup, fish soup, cereals, pies, pancakes, kulebyaki, pies, kissels, kvass, honey and others.

The nature of the preparation of Russian cuisine dishes is largely due to the peculiarities of the Russian stove, which for centuries faithfully served as a hearth for ordinary city people, and noble boyars, and townspeople. Ancient Rus' it is impossible to imagine both without chopped huts and without the famous Russian stove.

The Russian stove, with its mouth, was always turned towards the doors, so that the smoke could exit the hut through the open doors into the vestibule in the shortest way. The stoves in the chicken huts were large; several dishes could be cooked in them at the same time. Despite the fact that the food sometimes gave off a little smoke, the Russian oven had its advantages: the dishes cooked in it had a unique taste.

The peculiarities of the Russian oven determine such features of our cuisine as cooking dishes in pots and cast iron, frying fish and poultry in large pieces, an abundance of stews and baked dishes, a wide range of baked goods - pies, krupeniks, pies, kulebyak, etc.

Since the 16th century, we can talk about the differences in the cuisine of the monastery, rural and royal. They played in the monastery leading role vegetables, herbs, herbs and fruits. They formed the basis of the diet of the monks, especially during fasting. Rural cuisine was less rich and varied, but also refined in its own way: for holiday dinner It was supposed to serve at least 15 dishes. Lunch is generally the main meal in Rus'. In the old days, in more or less wealthy houses, four dishes were served in turn on a long table of strong oak planks, covered with an embroidered tablecloth: cold appetizer, soup, the second - in non-fasting times, usually meat - and pies or pies, which were eaten "for dessert".
Starters were very different, but the main among them were all sorts of salads - a mixture of finely chopped vegetables, usually boiled, to which you could add anything - from an apple to cold veal. From them came, in particular, a vinaigrette known to every Russian home. By the end of the 17th century, jelly became popular (from the word "chilled", that is, cold: firstly, jelly must be cold, otherwise it will spread on a plate; secondly, they usually ate it in winter, from Christmas to Epiphany, that is, in coldest time of the year). Then the ears appeared different fish, corned beef and sausages. Pickle amazed foreigners with its refined taste. Shchi - remember the proverb: "Schi and porridge is our food" - so, shchi was served with mushrooms, with fish, with pies.

Of the drinks, the most popular were berries and fruit juices with fruit drinks, as well as tinctures. Mead - based drink bee honey- was stronger, and then vodka appeared. But since ancient times, the main Russian drink has remained bread kvass. With what they didn’t do it - from raisins to mint!

But at the feasts of the boyars, a huge number of dishes began to appear, reaching up to fifty. At the royal table, 150-200 were served. Lunches lasted 6-8 hours in a row and included almost a dozen courses, each of which in turn consists of two dozen dishes of the same name: a dozen varieties of fried game, salted fish, a dozen varieties of pancakes and pies.

Dishes were prepared from a whole animal or plant, all kinds of grinding, grinding and crushing of food were used only in fillings for pies. Yes, and very moderately. Fish for pies, for example, were not crushed, but plastified.

At feasts, it was customary to drink honey before the feast, as an appetite stimulant, and after it, at the conclusion of feasts. Food was washed down with kvass and beer. This happened until the 15th century. In the XV century in Russia appeared " bread wine”, i.e. vodka.

In the 17th century, the order of serving dishes began to change (this applies to the rich holiday table). Now it consisted of 6-8 changes and only one dish was served in each change:
- hot (soup, stew, fish soup);
- cold (okroshka, botvinya, jelly, jellied fish, corned beef);
- roast (meat, poultry);
- body (boiled or fried hot fish);
- unsweetened pies, kulebyaka;
- porridge (sometimes it was served with cabbage soup);
- cake (sweet pies, pies);
- snacks.

As for drinks, for example, the register of those released from Sytny Dvor to receive Polish ambassadors read: Sovereign: 1 submission: Romanes, Bastra, Rensky, for purchase; 2nd serving: malmazei, muskatel, alkane, for purchase w; 3rd serving: cypresses, French wines, church wines, for purchase; red honey: 1 serving: cherry, raspberry, currant, ladle each; 2 serving: 2 buckets of raspberry honey, a bucket of boyar honey; 3 serving: 2 buckets of juniper honey, a bucket of wild cherry honey; white honey: 1 serving: 2 buckets of molasses honey with nails, a bucket of bucket honey; 2 serving: 2 ladles of honey with a musket, a ladle of bucket honey; 3 serving: 2 buckets of honey with cardamom, a bucket of bucket honey. In total about the Great Sovereign: Romanes, Bastra, Rhenskago, Malmazei, Mushkatel, Alkane, Kinarev, French wine, Church wine, 6 mugs each, and 6 glasses of vodka; red honey: cherry, raspberry, currant, bone, wild cherry, juniper, scalded, ladle each; white honey: bucket with cloves, with musket, with cardamom, 8 mugs each, 9 mugs of sugar. About the boyars, and about the roundabout, and about the thoughtful people, and about the ambassadors, and about the royal nobles: 2 mugs of aniseed vodka from romanea, cinnamon also, 8 mugs of boyar vodka, 5 buckets of romanea boyar, also, 5 buckets of bastra, 2 buckets of rensky, 5 buckets of alkane, 4 buckets of fryazhsky wine, 3 buckets of church wine, 8 buckets of cherry wine, 4 buckets of raspberry honey...” And this is not the end of the list.

However, despite the difference in the number of dishes for the rich and the poor, the nature of the food retained national features. The division happened later, from the time of Peter the Great.

The formation of Russian cuisine was also influenced by cultural exchange with neighboring peoples. Immediately, as soon as after the baptism, Slavic writing came to Rus' from Bulgaria, books began to be translated and copied, and not only liturgical ones. At this time, the Russian reader, little by little, gets acquainted with literary works, historical chronicles, natural scientific works, collections of sayings. In a very short historical period - during the time of Vladimir and especially his son Yaroslav - Rus' joins the culture of Bulgaria and Byzantium, Russian people assimilate the heritage of ancient Greece, Rome and ancient east. Along with the development of spiritual and cultural life in Rus', the introduction of church canons significantly changed the nature of nutrition. Spices and seasonings came into use: black and allspice, cloves and ginger, overseas fruits - lemons, new vegetables - zucchini, sweet peppers, etc., new cereals - "Saracen millet" (rice) and buckwheat.

Russian "cooks" borrowed many secrets from the Tsargrad masters who arrived in Muscovy - "skillful men, highly experienced not only in painting icons, but also in kitchen art." Acquaintance with Greek-Byzantine cuisine turned out to be very useful for our cuisine.

No less strong was the influence on Russian cuisine and our eastern neighbors - India. China, Persia. The first Russian people who visited these countries brought many new impressions from there. Russians learned a lot from the famous book by Athanasius Nikitin "Journey Beyond Three Seas" (1466-1472), which contains a description of products unfamiliar in Rus' - dates, ginger, coconut, pepper, cinnamon. And the book of Vasily Gagara (written in 1634-1637) expanded the horizons of our compatriots. They learned about the products used by the inhabitants of the Caucasus and the Middle East. Here are his observations on how sugar was produced in the East: “Yes, in the same Egypt reeds will be born, and sugar is made from it. And they dig reeds near the sea ... and when the reeds ripen, and eat them like there is honeycomb.

But our ancestors mastered not only the practical methods of cooking. They also thought about the essence of the phenomena occurring at the same time. They have long mastered the secrets of cooking yeast dough, which is mentioned in the annals: the monks of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra knew how to cook custard bread that did not stale for a long time.

Already in the XI-XII centuries. Russians knew many rather complicated methods of preparing kvass, medkov, and hops. They can be found in the famous ancient Russian herbalists, as well as in various "lives". So, kvass was widely known - wheat, honey, apple, ash, etc. Our ancestors were well versed not only in the intricacies of preparing various types of kvass, but also in the mechanism of action of sourdough, yeast, as evidenced by the numerous instructions of the ancients:

“The wheat is crushed and grinded, and the flour is sowed, and the dough is kneaded and sour.” Or: “And kvass for them to sour with sour thickening, and not with yeast.” "Kvass separates the mating and pasting of the dough and makes the bread liquid and buhon."

And other literary sources confirm the knowledge of Russian people in the field of food. So, in the "Book, the verb is a cool heliport" (XVII century) contains numerous discussions about the difference, for example, cow's milk from goat's, rabbit's meat from bear's, etc. It is curious that even then Russian people had an idea about the antiseptic properties of protein : “Egg white is put into medicine ... for sores and for all sorts of subcutaneous wounds. Also contributes to protein on prelin, in hot water soaking apply” (section “about chicken eggs”).

For a general idea of ​​nutrition in ancient times in Rus', here are a few culinary recipes for dishes that were popular at that time.

Turnip stuffed. Turnips are washed, boiled in water until soft, cooled, the skin is scraped off, the core is cut out. The removed pulp is finely chopped, added chopped meat and fill turnips with this stuffing. Sprinkle grated cheese on top, drizzle with butter and bake.

Oatmeal jelly. Pour grits warm water and leave overnight in a warm place. Then strain and squeeze. Add salt, sugar to the resulting liquid and boil, stirring constantly, until thickened. Add milk to hot jelly, mix, pour into buttered bowls, put in the cold. When the jelly hardens, cut it into portions and serve with cold boiled milk or yogurt.

"Pea block". Peas are completely boiled and crushed, the resulting puree is seasoned with salt and molded (you can use molds, cups, etc., oiled). The formed pea puree is spread on a plate and poured with sunflower oil with fried onions, sprinkled with herbs.

Peasant bread soup. Fry small dry crusts of white bread in fat with finely chopped parsley and finely chopped onions, then pour water, salt, pepper and bring to a boil. Whisking constantly, pour the beaten eggs into the soup in a thin stream. This soup, which tastes like meat, should be served immediately.

Sbiten-zhzhenka. To get burnt, sugar in a spoon is heated over low heat until a dark brown syrup forms. Dissolve honey in 4 cups of water and boil for 20-25 minutes, then add spices and boil for another 5 minutes. Strain the resulting mixture through cheesecloth and add zhzhenka for color. Serve hot.

"Monastery chicken". Chop the head of cabbage not very finely, put in a clay pot, pour eggs beaten with milk, salt, cover with a frying pan and put in the oven. Cabbage is considered ready when it acquires a beige color.

If you think that our ancestors lived in spacious, hay-smelling houses, slept on a warm Russian stove and lived happily ever after, then you are mistaken. So, as you thought, the peasants began to live a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty, or at most two hundred years ago.

Before that, the life of a simple Russian peasant was completely different.
Usually a person lived to be 40-45 years old and died already an old man. He was considered an adult man with a family and children at the age of 14-15, and she was even earlier. They did not get married for love, the father went to woo the bride to his son.

There was no time for idle rest. In summer, absolutely all the time was occupied by work in the field, in winter, harvesting firewood and Homework for the manufacture of tools and household utensils, hunting.

Let's look at the Russian village of the 10th century, which, however, is not much different from the village of both the 5th century and the 17th century ...

We got to the historical and cultural complex "Lyubytino" as part of a motor rally dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Avtomir group of companies. It is not in vain that it is called “One-storied Russia” - it was very interesting and informative to see how our ancestors lived.
In Lyubytino, at the place of residence of the ancient Slavs, among the barrows and graves, a real village of the 10th century was recreated, with all outbuildings and necessary utensils.

Let's start with an ordinary Slavic hut. The hut is cut from logs and covered with birch bark and turf. In some regions, the roofs of the same huts were covered with straw, and somewhere with wood chips. Surprisingly, the service life of such a roof is only slightly less than the service life of the entire house, 25-30 years, and the house itself served 40 years. Considering the lifetime at that time, the house was just enough for a person’s life.

By the way, in front of the entrance to the house there is a covered area - these are the very canopies from the song about "the canopy is new, maple."

The hut is heated in black, that is, the stove does not have a chimney, the smoke comes out through a small window under the roof and through the door. There are no normal windows either, and the door is only about a meter high. This is done in order not to release heat from the hut.
When the stove is fired, soot settles on the walls and roof. There is one big plus in the “black” firebox - there are no rodents and insects in such a house.

Of course, the house stands on the ground without any foundation, the lower crowns simply rest on several large stones.

This is how the roof was made (but not everywhere the roof was with turf)

And here is the oven. A stone hearth mounted on a pedestal made of logs smeared with clay. The stove was lit from early morning. When the stove is heated, it is impossible to stay in the hut, only the hostess remained there, preparing food, all the rest went outside to do business, in any weather. After the stove was heated, the stones gave off heat until the next morning. Food was cooked in the oven.

This is what the cabin looks like from the inside. They slept on benches placed along the walls, they also sat on them while eating. The children slept on the beds, they are not visible in this photo, they are on top, above the head. In winter, young livestock were taken into the hut so that they would not die from frost. They also washed in the hut. You can imagine what kind of air was there, how warm and comfortable it was there. It immediately becomes clear why life expectancy was so short.

In order not to heat the hut in the summer, when this is not necessary, there was a separate small building in the village - a bread oven. Bread was baked and cooked there.

Grain was stored in a barn - a building raised on poles from the surface of the earth to protect products from rodents.

Barrels were arranged in the barn, remember - “I scratched the bottom of the barn ...”? These are special board boxes in which grain was poured from above, and taken from below. So the grain was not stale.

Also in the village, a glacier was tripled - a cellar in which ice was laid in the spring, sprinkled with hay and lay there almost until the next winter.

Clothes, skins, utensils and weapons that were not needed at the moment were stored in a crate. The crate was also used when the husband and wife needed to retire.

Barn - this building served for drying sheaves and threshing grain. Heated stones were piled into the hearth, sheaves were laid on the poles, and the peasant dried them, constantly turning them over. Then the grains were threshed and winnowed.

Cooking in an oven involves a special temperature regime- languor. So, for example, gray cabbage soup is prepared. They are called gray because of their gray color. How to cook them?

Let's start with green cabbage leaves, those that did not enter the head of cabbage are finely chopped, salted and placed under oppression for a week, for fermentation.
Even for cabbage soup you need pearl barley, meat, onions, carrots. The ingredients are placed in a pot, and it is placed in the oven, where it will spend several hours. By the evening, a very hearty and thick dish will be ready.

For centuries, every nation has developed traditions that characterize its life, customs, and culture. The same traditions, conditioned by nature, climate, and economic opportunities, distinguish national cuisine, and it must be carefully studied in order to take into service everything of value. At the same time, based on the science of nutrition, on modern technological methods of food processing, it is certainly possible to create a healthy diet.

Unfortunately, Russian folk cuisine is not truly reflected in cookbooks, information about it is scattered across numerous sources (almanacs, guidebooks, reference books). Before the October Revolution, peasant cuisine was considered so unprestigious that it was not mentioned at all. Even the names of folk dishes (prison, mash, stew) we will not find in cookbooks.

Meanwhile, folk cuisine is practically constant and not subject to the influences of fashion. It is appropriate to recall how difficult it was for potatoes to take root in Russia. Back in 1830, one had to resort to the help of priests, who in their sermons urged the peasants to grow it. As already mentioned, the Slavs from time immemorial were engaged in arable farming, fished, hunted animals in the forests, used the gifts of the forest for food: berries, mushrooms, herbs, roots, were engaged in beekeeping.

A truly amazing Slavic invention was the Russian stove. She did not allow frying and sautéing food - the main method of cooking was boiling and languishing. Cast iron or a clay pot placed in a Russian stove made it possible to obtain dishes of unique taste and aroma. It was the folk cuisine that knew many techniques (smearing the surface of cast iron with rye dough, baking in dough, steaming the product) that were not used in the kitchen of the masters.

Peasant cuisine was distinguished by simplicity, naturalness, that is, it was healthy compared to the master's. The well-known saying “shchi and porridge is our food” quite accurately reflected the peasant life. Butter the general public was practically unaware. “You can’t spoil porridge with butter” is a dream about fatty porridge. The peasants ate cottage cheese, dairy products, they drank only skimmed milk (after making sour cream). They were very fond of pies with vegetables, peas, berries, mushrooms, and fish. Moreover, pies were baked on the hearth of a Russian oven, where they did not turn out with a rough crust, as in conventional oven: a thin layer of tender crust combined with juicy stuffing gave a rich flavor range.

Russian prison. You won't find this dish in any other cuisine. If the French cook soup with cheese and wine, and the Italians with spices, then the Russians take kvass, crumble rye bread into it, chop the onion and season it with hemp oil - and the prison is ready. From the modern positions of nutrition science, it can be said with confidence that such a dish is balanced, not subjected to prolonged heat treatment (broth cooking), which means it is more healthy food. Tyuri was prepared with skimmed milk and sometimes with water. They turned out to be very useful while working in the field, during the harvest.

The famous Russian cabbage soup was languishing in the oven, where they acquired their unique taste and aroma, the so-called "honey spirit". Shchi was seasoned with rye flour, cereals, and in poor families they prepared "empty" cabbage soup, where "grain after grain runs with a club." Porridges were prepared from millet, barley, oats (the people did not know rice and called it "Saracenic millet"). Cooked porridge in cast iron or clay pots. They ate it with hemp or poppy seed oil. Sunflower appeared in Rus' much later.

Pokhlyobka is a traditional Russian food. Peasants cooked stew exclusively on vegetable broths, and not on broths. Moreover, in the folk cuisine they did not know vinaigrettes, salads, but used any one type of vegetable. For example, stew from turnips, nettles, legumes. It was seasoned with sour cream, milk or vegetable oil. The soup cooked very quickly. Particularly loved by the people was stew with onions. From vegetables, cabbage, turnips, carrots, beets, radishes, and later potatoes were used. Moreover, vegetables were only boiled or steamed in a Russian oven (“easier than a steamed turnip” is a saying that characterizes just such a method of cooking).

From early spring to late autumn, people used the wealth of the forest: berries, mushrooms, nettles, goutweed, quinoa, cow parsnip and other edible wild plants. Such a valuable herbal supplement to the peasant diet enriched it with biologically active substances. Many vegetables and herbs were consumed in their natural form, and a kind of snack seasoned with vegetable oil was prepared from radishes and green onions.

Potatoes were eaten boiled (potato stew) or baked in their skins, but never fried. Cucumbers were salted, fermented, they were widely used together with cabbage, turnips for making stews.

Even poor peasants prepared for the future vegetables, fruits and gifts of the forest. They made a wide variety of kvass (fruit, rye, oatmeal). Kissels were cooked from rye flour or oats. They were not sweet (after all, jelly is from the word “sour”), but resembled frozen jelly (it is no coincidence that jelly coasts appear in folklore). Thick kissels received due to starch-containing substances of rye flour or oats.

Meat was rare festive dish. Even wealthy peasants did not eat it often. In addition, we must not forget that before the revolution in Russia, almost 200 days a year were officially declared fasting and they were observed quite strictly. Long fasts, of course, were harmful to health, but in general, the very idea of ​​fast days contained a weighty rational grain. First, fasting began when slaughtering was unprofitable. And in general, as you know, the slaughter of livestock for a peasant is a forced measure. Secondly, certain seasonal eating habits have been developed over the centuries. Naturally, in winter period the body weakens, as many products, especially vegetable ones, lose their natural virtues during storage (vitamins, pigments are destroyed, the phytoncidal properties of plants are lost). In winter, it is more necessary to use blanks for the future, that is, to eat foods that are inferior in their biological qualities to fresh ones. No wonder the spring marked the most high mortality among the population (especially the elderly, the sick). Therefore, from early spring to autumn, it is extremely important to enrich your diet with plants, especially wild ones, since only in the wild do they have maximum strength compared to cultivated plants.

In a peasant family, meat was mostly eaten only boiled with cabbage soup. The favorite delicacy of the peasants was offal (lungs, spleen, intestines, legs, cartilage). They made pies and cereals from them. The intestines were stuffed with porridge and languished in the oven. In many places in Moscow, hot offal was sold, and in order to keep this dish hot, cast irons were wrapped in a blanket. The peasants were especially fond of jelly, which was boiled from cartilage and legs. Aspic was added to kvass, cabbage soup. Chickens were rarely used for food, as they were expensive, but eggs were made into omelettes or added to minced meat when making pies.

Traditional peasant food was pies - vegetable or with cereals, baked from rye flour in a Russian oven, and stuffed with cabbage, turnips, turnips, potatoes. Fish pies were especially famous. River fish went not only to pies, but also to the ear. Occasionally, fish was baked on straw, which gave it an excellent taste and aroma, but never fried. Fats in folk cuisine practically did not heat up, which was justified from the point of view of rational nutrition.

Tea has long been a gourmet drink. It became famous in the 17th century thanks to the Russian ambassador who returned from China. "Outlandish drinking" was recognized by the nobility, and then among the merchants. For the people, especially in the countryside, he remained expensive product. Not without reason in the peasant environment such ditties were sung: “I will sell a fox collar, I will buy a spool of tea. I will sell a scythe harrow, I will buy tea utensils. Recall that a spool is a few grams, and the price is equal to a fox collar. Tea was replaced by dozens of types of decoctions: from the leaves of strawberries, raspberries, currants, as well as wild plants - oregano, mint, St. John's wort, chamomile. Such decoctions were consumed daily and used as a medicine.

Not a single table could do without rye bread. They ate a lot of it - an adult peasant accounted for almost 1.5 kilograms daily. But white wheat bread was practically unknown. It was called sieve, that is, sifted (wheat flour was sown through a sieve to separate the coarse shells). In early spring, especially in lean years, they baked bread with chaff, quinoa, nettles, and also used tree bark. When there was no bread, they prepared a mess - food for hastily: rye flour was brewed with boiling water, salted, oil was added.

For hundreds of years, a certain ritual of eating has developed in peasant life, which had nothing to do with the master's customs. It is impossible to imagine a peasant who got up after dark and immediately sat down to have breakfast, and he would be served an appetizer, main course and dessert, as was customary in rich families. The peasant went to work immediately. In a bad time, he had breakfast after the sun had risen. His menu consisted of vegetables, rye bread, kvass, tyurya, that is, the food was both hearty and light, and did not require long preparation. Lunch time caught the peasant in the field, and lunch was also light - otherwise you can’t work. Dinner was the main meal. After many hours of hard work in the air, the whole family gathered at the table by the light of the bowl. The host took a seat at the head of the table, then the children were seated according to seniority - subordination was strictly observed. The saying: "When I eat, I am deaf and dumb" - reflects the serious attitude of the people to food. They ate really silently, if the child began to play pranks, they immediately pulled him up.

They ate from one bowl with spoons (knives and forks were not known). Pieces of rye bread served as napkins, they also wiped spoons and bowls. Food waste were not thrown away, but were fed to livestock. Since childhood, peasants have been accustomed to take care of products, economically, rationally manage their households.

Served for dessert steamed turnip, cucumbers with honey or various herbal drinks. Only after that did a conversation begin, concerning work, family, economic affairs. Such conversations were of considerable educational value for children and adolescents, taught them to value work and respect the elderly. It was the family that was the first moral school for them.

Did the peasants like to eat delicious food? Of course, but the city delicacies were unknown to them. They did not know either cheese or overseas fruits. Their food was natural and prepared quickly, without any special tricks. And this means that the products retained the maximum amount of biologically active substances. Of course, the peasant did not suspect this. But he knew for sure: food should be simple and satisfying, it should give strength, and not weaken, should strengthen health, and not ruin it.

The daily struggle for existence, exhausting work from dawn to dusk gave rise to naive dreams of a free life, free from these hardships. The well-known story about Ersh Ershovich eloquently testifies to how the “heavenly life” was imagined. It tells about a country where milky rivers flow with jelly banks, where there is a lot of red (royal) fish, caviar, meat, overseas sweets and spices. True, the narrative is painted in clearly satirical tones - after all, idleness and gluttony never seemed attractive and did not fit into the norms of folk morality.

The 20th century was marked by the rapid development of civilization, which, however, brought with it not only gigantic technological progress, but also a decisive breakdown of many traditions that had been preserved for a particularly long time among the peasantry. In a number of countries, the city generally ousted the village or completely subjugated it to itself. The foundations of rural life were undermined. The villager got acquainted with the newest household appliances. Broad mass information allows him to go on a par with the century. So does it make sense to turn to the origins, to resurrect that which does not correspond to the conditions of present life? And, in particular, is it worth it to promote folk cuisine? It turns out it's worth it.

Modern nutritional science, based on the latest discoveries in the field of food hygiene, physiology, biochemistry, has proved that a person needs a wide range of products in their natural form or subjected to light heat treatment. And it turned out that it was the simple, "coarse" folk food, which was sometimes treated with arrogance, in many respects exactly corresponds to the scientific principles of the most rational, healthy diet.

Now they talk a lot about nutrition - proper, healthy, various diets. Something is considered useful, something harmful, but still edible. But how was this issue solved a hundred years ago? What then was accepted on the everyday dinner table?

The composition of peasant food was determined by the natural nature of his economy, purchased dishes were a rarity. It was distinguished by its simplicity, it was also called rough, as it required a minimum of time to prepare. The huge amount of housework left the cook no time to cook pickles and everyday food was monotonous. Only in holidays when the hostess had enough time, other dishes appeared on the table. The rural woman was conservative in ingredients and cooking methods.

The lack of culinary experiments was also one of the features of everyday tradition. The villagers were not pretentious in food, so all recipes for its diversity were perceived as pampering.

The well-known proverb “Schi and porridge is our food” correctly reflected the everyday content of the food of the villagers. In the Oryol province, the daily food of both rich and poor peasants was "brew" (shchi) or soup. On fast days, these dishes were seasoned with lard or “zatoloka” (internal pork fat), according to fast days- hemp oil. During the Petrovsky Post, the Oryol peasants ate “mura” or tyurya from bread, water and butter. holiday food differed in that it was better seasoned, the same “brew” was prepared with meat, porridge with milk, and on the most solemn days they fried potatoes with meat. On big temple holidays, the peasants cooked jelly, jelly from the legs and offal.

Meat was not a permanent component of the peasant diet. According to the observations of N. Brzhevsky, the food of the peasants, in quantitative and qualitative terms, did not satisfy the basic needs of the body. "Milk, cow butter, cottage cheese, meat, - he wrote, - all products rich in protein substances appear on the peasant table in exceptional cases - at weddings, on patronal holidays. Chronic malnutrition is a common occurrence in a peasant family.”

Another rarity on the peasant table was wheat bread. In the “Statistical Essay on the Economic Situation of the Peasants of the Oryol and Tula Provinces” (1902), M. Kashkarov noted that “ Wheat flour is never found in the everyday life of a peasant, except in the gifts brought from the city, in the form of rolls. To all questions about wheat culture, I heard the saying more than once in response: “ White bread for the white body. At the beginning of the 20th century, in the villages of the Tambov province, the composition of the consumed bread was distributed as follows: rye flour - 81.2, wheat flour - 2.3, cereals - 16.3%.

Of the cereals eaten in the Tambov province, millet was the most common. Kulesh porridge was cooked from it, when they added lard. Lenten cabbage soup was seasoned with vegetable oil, while lean cabbage soup was whitened with milk or sour cream. The main vegetables eaten here were cabbage and potatoes.

Carrots, beets and other root crops were grown in the village before the revolution. Cucumbers appeared in the gardens of Tambov peasants only in Soviet times. Even later, in the 1930s, tomatoes began to be grown in vegetable gardens. Traditionally, legumes were cultivated and eaten in the villages: peas, beans, lentils.

The everyday drink of the peasants was water, in the summer they prepared kvass. At the end of the 19th century, tea drinking was not widespread in the villages of the Chernozem Territory, if tea was consumed, then during illness, brewing it in a clay pot in an oven.

Usually, the order of food among the peasants was as follows: in the morning, when everyone got up, they were reinforced by something: bread and water, baked potatoes, yesterday's leftovers. At 9-10 in the morning they sat down at the table and had breakfast with brew and potatoes. At 12 o'clock, but no later than 2 pm, everyone dined, in the afternoon they ate bread and salt. They dined in the village at nine o'clock in the evening, and in winter even earlier. Field work required considerable physical effort, and the peasants, to the best of their ability, tried to eat more high-calorie food.

In the absence of any significant food supply in peasant families, each crop failure entailed grave consequences. In times of famine, food consumption by a rural family was reduced to a minimum. For the purpose of physical survival in the village, cattle were slaughtered, seeds were used for food, and inventory was sold. During the famine, the peasants ate bread made from buckwheat, barley or rye flour with chaff.

K. Arseniev, after a trip to the hungry villages of the Morshansky district of the Tambov province (1892), described his impressions in the Vestnik Evropy as follows: “During the famine, the families of the peasants Senichkin and Morgunov fed on cabbage soup from unusable leaves of gray cabbage, heavily seasoned with salt. This caused terrible thirst, the children drank a lot of water, swelled up and died.

Periodic famine developed a tradition of survival in the Russian village. Here are sketches of this hungry everyday life. “In the village of Moskovskoye, Voronezh district, in the years of famine (1919-1921), the existing food bans (do not eat pigeons, horses, hares) mattered little. The local population ate a more or less suitable plant, plantain, did not disdain to cook horse soup, ate “magpie and varanyatina”. Hot dishes were made from potatoes, poured grated beets fried rye, quinoa was added. In famine years, they did not eat bread without impurities, which they used as grass, quinoa, chaff, potato and beet tops and other surrogates.

But even in prosperous years, malnutrition and unbalanced nutrition were commonplace. At the beginning of the 20th century, in European Russia, among the peasant population, 4,500 kcal per day accounted for one eater, and 84.7% of them were plant origin, including 62.9% of grain and only 15.3% of calories received from food of animal origin. For example, sugar consumption by rural residents was less than a pound per month, and vegetable oil- half a pound.

According to the correspondent of the Ethnographic Bureau, meat consumption at the end of the 19th century was 20 pounds per year for a poor family, and 1.5 pounds per year for a prosperous family. In the period 1921-1927, vegetable products in the diet of Tambov peasants accounted for 90-95%. Meat consumption was negligible: 10 to 20 pounds a year.

But this information surprised me. According to A. Shingarev, at the beginning of the 20th century there were only two bathhouses in the village of Mokhovatka for 36 families, and in the neighboring Novo-Zhivotinny - one for 10 families. Most of the peasants washed once or twice a month in a hut, in trays, or simply on straw.

The tradition of washing in the oven was preserved in the village until the Great Patriotic War. An Oryol peasant woman, a resident of the village of Ilinskoye M. Semkina (born 1919), recalled: “We used to bathe at home, from a bucket, there was no bathhouse. And the old people climbed into the oven. Mother will sweep the stove, lay straws there, the old people climb in, warm the bones.

Constant work on the farm and in the field left little time for peasant women to maintain cleanliness in their homes. At best, rubbish was swept out of the hut once a day. The floors in the houses were washed no more than 2-3 times a year, usually for the patronal feast, Easter and Christmas. Easter in the village was traditionally a holiday for which the villagers put their homes in order.

Vladimir Bezgin, Doctor of Historical Sciences, writes about the peasant diet and hygiene in the article “Traditions of peasant life of the late XIX - early XX centuries (food, housing, clothing)” (“Bulletin of the Tambov State technical university", No. 4, 2005).