Russian Christmas dish. Jellied pig and rooster

If you carefully study the history of the holiday from the point of view of cooking, it turns out that the hostesses prepared two tables: lenten for Christmas Eve and plentifully fast for Christmas morning.

On Christmas night from January 6 to 7, a festive Divine Liturgy is celebrated. On the very day of the Christmas holiday, believers break their fast (they do not eat lean, but fast food). The twelve following days after Christmas are called holy days, or Christmas time. This is probably why, according to legend, there should be 12 dishes on the Christmas table. Some of them passed to the morning of January 7 from Christmas Eve - these are kutya and zvar. The rest, modest, dishes were waiting in the wings.

Christmas Eve: First Star

The holiday begins on the evening of January 6 - Christmas Eve comes. According to church rules and folk tradition, on this day they do not eat until the first star appears in the sky - in remembrance of the Bethlehem star, which showed the magi the way to the place of the Nativity of Christ.
They also say that Christmas is not celebrated alone - this family celebration. It was customary to gather either with parents or with the whole big family the eldest in the family. Before the first star, the hostess had to prepare several lenten obligatory Christmas dishes. The main items in this menu were kutya, or sochivo, and vzvar (uzvar).

Sochivo, or Kutya

An indispensable dish, without which pre-revolutionary Russia Neither Christmas nor Easter was celebrated. Christmas Eve - from Sochiva, or Kuteinik - from Kutia, as they called the day before Christmas. And all of it passed in anticipation of the miracle of birth. It was believed that the richer and tastier the sochivo, the more fruitful the next year would be.
The products from which kutya was prepared were endowed with special significance: grain was considered a symbol of resurrection to life, honey was a symbol of health and a prosperous (sweet) life, and poppy promised prosperity in the family.
Pre-revolutionary writer A.A. Korinfsky wrote: “In the evening, on the eve of the Nativity of Christ, Russian people who invariably adhere to the old pious customs do not break the fast: according to the Charter of the Church, only sochivo is allowed to eat at this time. Conversation - in the morning, after early mass; and until the morning, Filippovkas are still standing in Rus', going from November 15 (28) until the merry joyful Christmas time.
However, wheat was not always the basis of kutya. In the southern regions of Russia, rice was more often cooked. However, nuts, honey and dried fruits remained an unchanged part of the recipe.
Traditional Sochi Recipe
wheat grains - one glass,
poppy - 100 g,
purified walnuts, hazelnuts, cashews - 100 g,
honey - 3 tablespoons,
dried fruits.
Crush the grains in a wooden mortar, adding a little warm water so that the wheat shell comes off. Then the kernel must be separated from the husk, sifted and washed. Cook crumbly lean porridge on the water, adding 2-3 cups of water to the cereal.
Grind the poppy seeds until poppy milk is obtained, add honey to it, mix and put in wheat porridge. At the very end, add crushed nuts and dried fruits steamed with boiling water.

Rice juice

rice - 1 cup,
raisins - 50 g,
prunes - 50 g,
dried apricots - 50 g,
almonds or walnuts - 50 g,
honey - three tablespoons
Rinse rice, pour cold water and bring to a boil. Drain in a colander and rinse again with cold water. Then pour 1.5 cups cold water and cook until tender without removing the lid. Steam dried fruits in hot water (15-20 minutes).
Cut prunes and dried apricots. Crush the almonds. If all the water has not boiled away, it should be drained, the rice should be cooled. Add dried fruits, honey and nuts to the rice.

blast

Second obligatory dish christmas table. A broth was prepared from dried fruits, but honey was added instead of sugar. The most popular was apple broth with the addition of dry or soaked berries cranberries, cranberries or raspberries.
In the south of Russia, smoked pear was always added to the drink. Mint, oregano, currant leaf, thyme and other fragrant herbs are often added. It is not necessary to boil the broth: it is enough to pour fruit with boiling water and leave to infuse. A thermos is perfect for this purpose. Often juicy is diluted with a boil and eaten in the form of liquid sweet porridge.

Lean pancakes

Christmas Eve was not complete without meatless dishes. But if kutya and vzvar were obligatory, then pancakes, vinaigrette, cabbage rolls, fish pies, vegetable stews or kashi remained welcome guests on the last day of fasting. Among this menu, pancakes were common. They wonderfully complemented boiled fish or caviar, jam or honey. Only they were made without milk and butter. For example, on potato broth or mineral water.

The vinaigrette

Lenten vinaigrette or with herring was served very often on Christmas Eve. The recipe is simple, but the dish turns out tasty and inexpensive, which made it possible to cook it in poor families. And in the houses of the wealthy, sturgeon or white fish could be added to the Christmas vinaigrette.

Christmas goose with sauerkraut

When the night passes and after the service the family returns to the house, the long-awaited Christmas holiday comes. The post is left behind, and on the table appear meat dishes, milk and butter pies, oily fish and sumptuous desserts.
It was believed that a baked goose (or other bird) and pork dishes should be an indispensable attribute of the Christmas meal. Of course, on the eve of Christmas, millions of geese, ducks, turkeys and chickens were brought to the country's bazaars.
“Christmas in Moscow felt a long time ago - a cheerful, business hustle. They just started talking in Filippovka, on November 14, for the Christmas post, and already at the freight stations, especially in Rogozhskaya, the geese cackle day and night - “goose trains”, to Germany: before it was, before the glaciers-wagons, live cargo. Believe it or not - hundreds of trains! A goose walked through Moscow - from Kozlov, Tambov, Kursk, Saratov, Samara ... I don’t remember Poltava, Poland, Lithuania, Volyn: the paths from there are different. And duck, and chicken, and turkey, and black grouse ... capercaillie and hazel grouse, bacon-brisket, and ... - what the soul only requires for Christmas, ”wrote Ivan Shmelev.
little goose,
cabbage - 800 g,
bulbs - 4 pcs.,
cumin - 0.5 tbsp.,
salt,
oil.
If the carcass is frozen, let the goose lie down in the refrigerator for a day. Then wash the goose, rub it inside and out with salt and cumin. If possible, you can boil the goose in red wine - whole, about 40 minutes. Wine will give the bird softness.
Stew sauerkraut with oil and onions in a saucepan, covered. Stuff the goose with this cabbage and fry on a baking sheet, pouring a little broth on it and pouring it over the goose. Then goose fat will be melted - you will water it.

Cold pig with horseradish

Pig on the table
Not less than traditional product there was pork on the Christmas table. According to legend, when Jesus was born, in the manger all the animals joyfully met the divine baby - except for the pig. She grunted annoyingly and prevented the baby from sleeping. That is why, as a punishment, the pig became an indispensable dish of the Christmas table.
Even during Lent, they began to bring to the capitals, to central fairs, whole carts with pork - there were huge carcasses, and barrels of corned beef, and suckling pigs. “Bad, bad, but two or three carcasses of pigs are necessary, and black piglets, fry with porridge, three dozen, and white ones, for aspic, moloshnichki, two dozen, so that there is enough for plots,” Ivan Shmelev wrote in “The Lord’s Summer”.
Many dishes were prepared from pork, but in every wealthy house the table was decorated with a suckling pig with porridge or cold with horseradish.
Recipe from Ekaterina Avdeeva's book "Handbook of Russian experienced hostess» simple: boil the whole pig in salt water With fragrant herbs- thyme, dill - and onions. Then cut into pieces and pour horseradish with sour cream. Serve cold.

Pork belly stuffed with cabbage and apples

In the old days, porridge was served with pork feet, but you can make pork belly with cabbage and apples for buckwheat porridge. It will turn out very juicy.
pork belly - 800 g,
cabbage - 400 g,
apples - 5 pcs.,
butter - 1 tbsp,
bulb - 1 pc.,
salt and pepper.
Chop fresh cabbage, salt, squeeze. Add finely chopped cabbage sour apples, oil, mix. pork belly wash, chop the bones in several places, cut a large hole between the bones and meat with a knife.
Put the prepared minced meat there, sew it up, place it on a frying pan or baking sheet, sprinkle with finely chopped onions, add 3 tablespoons of water and fry in an oven heated to 200 ° C until cooked. Serve with crumbly buckwheat porridge.

Jellied pig and rooster

Rinse the knuckle and legs of the piglet well and cut into pieces. Put in a saucepan, pour cold water so that it covers the meat by a few centimeters, boil and remove the foam. After an hour, add the carcass of the rooster.
Boil aspic over very low heat for 6-8 hours, so that the water boils away to half the volume. 20 minutes before the end of cooking, add to the broth Bay leaf, peppercorns and salt to taste. Remove the meat from the broth, separate from the bones and cut into pieces. Strain the broth. Pour chopped garlic on the bottom of the dish, put the meat, pour the broth, mix gently with a spoon and refrigerate until it hardens.

Rye pie with fish

For test:
rye flour - 1 cup,
wheat flour - 1 cup,
milk - 1 glass,
dry yeast - 1 tsp,
sugar - 2 tsp,
salt - 1 tsp,
vegetable oil - 1 tbsp. l.
For filling:
pikeperch fillet - 500 g,
mussels, peeled - 200 g,
onion - 1 pc.,
carrots - 1 pc.,
brine pickles- 500 ml,
vegetable oil- 2 tablespoons,
dill - 1 bunch,
salt and white pepper taste.
We knead the dough, for which 1 tsp. dry yeast pour 5 tsp. warm water, let stand for swelling for 10-15 minutes. Sift wheat and rye flour, pour in vegetable oil, milk room temperature, add sugar and salt, add yeast, knead.
Let the dough rise in a warm place. The dough should rise twice and be folded twice. We divide it into 2 parts.
For filling in cucumber pickle boil the mussels and fish, put them in a colander. Peel and finely chop the onion and carrot. In a frying pan, fry vegetables with fish and mussels. Let's salt and pepper. Turn off, add chopped dill. Form a cake in a baking sheet, brush the top with egg yolk and bake for 50 minutes at 170°C.

ginger pie

butter - 100 g + another piece for lubrication,
dark unrefined cane sugar- 100 g,
flour with baking powder - 175 g,
ground ginger - 4 tsp,
light molasses - 175 g,
ginger wine - 3 tablespoons,
eggs of any size, can be beaten - 2 pcs.,
finely grated fresh ginger the size of a hazelnut
finely chopped canned ginger- 150 g,
powdered sugar - 75 g,
ginger root for decoration - 1 pc.
Preheat oven to 160°C, grease a 23 cm baking dish. Beat butter and sugar with a pinch of salt until the mixture is fluffy. Sift flour and ground ginger together.
Pour in light molasses (for convenience, use a spoon pre-lubricated with oil and a silicone kitchen spatula), 1 tbsp. wine and mix everything together. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then gradually add the flour.
Mix everything with fresh and canned ginger. Spoon the resulting mixture into a baking dish. Smooth the surface and bake for about 50-60 minutes until the surface wooden skewer, lowered into the middle of the pie, the dough will not stick. Leave the cake to cool in the mold. After the cake has cooled completely, make the frosting by mixing powdered sugar and the remaining ginger wine, and drizzle over the top of the pie. Cut the ginger root into thin pieces and decorate the cake.

Russian custard soufflé

any berries - 500 g,
water - ½ cup,
sugar - 2 cups,
egg whites - 5 pcs.
Make a puree from the berries, add water and boil. Add sugar (about the same amount as the puree). Beat egg whites into stiff foam. Add to puree. Put the puree in baking dishes, put for 30 minutes in an oven heated to 170 degrees.

Christmas - Holy holiday, and in Rus' it was always looked forward to, but celebrated widely and cheerfully. In a series of traditional festivities, skating and fortune-telling, the Russian people did not forget about the feast. But how? After all, it was before Christmas. Let not the strictest, with permission sometimes eat fish, but still - fasting.

special christmas fish dish we didn't, it's on Easter table you can’t do without fish, and at Christmas the main thing is meat. They slaughtered cattle for Christmas, salted hams, smoked ham, stuffed sausages, pig heads and stomachs. They caroled - they walked through the streets on the eve of Christmas and sang: “Give the gut and the leg through the window!”

They did not spare meat and cabbage soup. After lean fish, with sturgeon head or smelt, they broke the fast with rich cabbage soup - with boiled lamb or beef, whitening them with sour cream, milk or cream.

But the conversation did not begin at all with meat - in Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve, with the first star it was necessary to taste sochi (it is also kolivo, or kutya). And only then, after matins - raise a glass under a roast goose or a pig's head. It came-rolled Nativity! Have fun, guys - Christmas time has come!

In some provinces, special pancakes were baked for Christmas - made from oatmeal. They gave them to friends, invited relatives to oatmeal pancakes. Oats were generally considered one of the symbols of Christmas celebrations. Vasiliev evening, New Year's Eve in the old style, was also called Ovsen.

TO oatmeal pancakes great fit special dish- yarn. In Belarus, it is called machanka, from the word "dunk" - dipped in thick meat sauce not only pancakes, but also traditional Belarusian potato pancakes, boiled potatoes, just freshly baked bread.

Roe deers were baked for sweets in the northern Russian provinces. Intricate, in the form of cows, sheep, goats, deer. In every house, the housewives, together with the children, sculpted them with their hands, passing on traditions from generation to generation. Sometimes tin notches were used, it is not difficult to make them yourself from a simple strip of tin. Children's molds for fun with sand are also suitable - they just need to be greased with oil from the inside. Dough options for goats are very different, from simple unleavened rye to gingerbread - in butter and egg yolks. Novgorod region has its own version - voluminous "cows" from unleavened dough mixed with milk. Not necessarily in the form of a cow, by the way. Even the birds from such a dough, molded and baked for Christmas, were called cows.

We warmed up at Christmas with a sbiten. Children were offered a non-alcoholic version, adults - strong, with beer, brandy, vodka or wine.

The Christmas table in any Russian house looked especially festive. Often it was left covered for the whole time Christmas time(12 days from Christmas to Epiphany), and a wide variety of treats were not removed from him - in anticipation of an uninvited, but always welcome guest or carolers. Under the most elegant tablecloths, it was customary to put a bunch of straw - as a reminder of the birth of the baby Christ in a barn near Bethlehem. In some Russian regions, this custom has survived to this day ...

On the feast of the Nativity of Christ, it has always been customary in Rus' for the whole family to gather at the table, whose members, enjoying the meal, had a sincere conversation. The housewives began to prepare for this great event in advance: they crushed cereals into cereals, ground flour, whipped cream into butter.

Traditional food for Christmas Eve

On the eve of the holiday, called Kolyada or Christmas Eve, at the feast of the last day of fasting, it was customary to serve 12 festive dishes in honor of the 12 apostles - disciples of Christ. In the center of the table they put the main dish, called "Sochiv" or "Kutya". It was prepared from boiled cereals(for more details, see the link): barley, wheat, buckwheat, rye, rice, and sometimes even pea groats. Among the obligatory components, crushed nuts, poppy seeds, honey, and sugar were added there. The poppy was rubbed in a mortar with a pestle until the milky juice stood out, only after that it was combined with porridge. Steamed raisins, prunes, dried apricots were often added to rice juice.

As hot dishes on Christmas Eve, they stewed cabbage with carrots, seasoning it vegetable oil, as well as pea (bean) puree with fried onions, lean borscht with fish or mushrooms, dumplings with cherry or plum jam.

Traditional salads were vinaigrette, sauerkraut with green boiled peas. baked lenten pies with cabbage, potatoes, mushrooms, apples, pears, pickles were taken out of barrels.

On the holy evening, cabbage rolls were also eaten, but cooked without meat. In the villages of Western Ukraine they baked special bread"Karachun", "vasyl" - a symbol of wealth and prosperity, baking grains of cereals and garlic cloves in it. They washed down the meal with var (splash) - (from cherries, apples, plums, pears, quince).

Traditional food for Christmas

The Christmas menu has always been distinguished by abundance and variety, but most often in Rus' on this day they cooked a goose with apples, baked a little pig in the oven, stuffed a pike.

Pancakes are traditionally served with various fillings(mushrooms, meat, cottage cheese), baked or fried fish, aspic (jelly) with horseradish or mustard sauce, homemade pork sausage, roast with ribs, boiled pork, brawn, egg noodles boiled in milk, liver fried in batter, dumplings, pilaf with meat, raisins and carrots.

Homemade sweets on the Christmas menu

If we were transported a couple of hundred years ago, we would see on holiday table, palyanitsi, knyshiki, sweet pies with fruit or curd filling, poppy seed buns, rich rolls with skillful dough patterns. Today, many housewives also bake cakes, muffins, pastries. On this day, it was allowed to drink beer, wine, liqueur, brew, fruit tincture.

In Rus', it was believed that the richer the festive Christmas table, the more satisfying the whole next year would be. They decorate the interior with fresh spruce branches, and in the old days the floor and the table were covered with bundles of hay. Of course, each family has its own special rules and traditions associated with this great holiday. But invariably on such a bright day they wish each other only good, well-being, prosperity, give gifts and souvenirs from the bottom of their hearts.

Publications in the Traditions section

Cultural code: Christmas cuisine

B people by old recipes which you can cook yourself.

You can't reach the first star

40 days before Christmas, the Advent (or Filippov) fast begins. It is quite strict, and its ending, when even the fish is not blessed, coincides in time with the celebration of the New Year. So the Orthodox are not allowed to drink wine on the night of 31 to 1. And the sixth of January is not supposed to be and there is nothing but juicy. It is believed that it was this dish that gave the name to Christmas Eve - last day before Christmas. It was eaten in the evening, when the first star appeared in the sky - a dish of cereals, nuts and dried fruits should have given strength to endure the long Christmas service.

SOCHIVO, recipe by Maxim Syrnikov
Take a glass of wheat grains. Rinse well, put in a cast-iron pot, pour three glasses of water, salt. Close the lid and put in a preheated oven for two to three hours. At the end of cooking, the wheat should be completely boiled, the grains should become soft and even partially burst. Cool them directly in the pot, not allowing them to dry out. Sochivo should be just juicy, soft, but at the same time crumbly.
Mix grains with prepared raisins, finely chopped dried apricots, prunes, steamed and crushed poppy seeds, any nuts to taste. And then put it on a dish and pour over honey full - honey, diluted with water in a ratio of one to one and brought to a boil.

There are quite a lot of similar recipes for sochiv, perhaps the only true one does not exist. The choice of cereals, cereals and additives to them depended on the region, wealth in the family and personal preferences of the hostess. Somewhere they put kolivo on the table, somewhere - kutya, in fact, this is the same thing, only the names are different. It is important to remember that in Russian ritual cuisine, kutya can be both modest and lenten, and on Christmas Eve it is lenten that is served. The Orthodox will be able to break the fast (that is, eat non-lenten food) only the next day, at Christmas.

He does not turn his head, crunches on his teeth

On Christmas Eve, they began to prepare for the Christmas feast - according to custom, it was necessary to cook at least 12 different dishes, according to the number of holy apostles. Of course, it was difficult to maintain such a tradition - for such a rich menu, one had to have a certain income. In order to lure him just for Christmas, whole herds of goats were baked - gingerbread in the form of animals. They were both a delicacy and a talisman for the home.

On Christmas Eve in the evening, the whole family sits at the table and sculpts cows from yeast-free dough mixed with milk. Milk, Wheat flour, salt - all ingredients. Then they will be taken out into the yard in the frost all night, and on Christmas morning they will be sent to the oven. In memory of the holiday, several skillfully made figurines will be kept for the whole year.

Maxim Syrnikov

In the northern villages, roe deer were either cut out of rolled dough in a special shape (which was cherished and passed down by inheritance), or sculpted like a clay toy. They baked them first from rye flour, later - from wheat, then they began to add to it burnt sugar, and in the 18th century, various spices became available to northerners, and roe deer became even tastier. The dough for them was prepared much in advance, kept in the cold - it was believed that this improved its quality. Ready-made gingerbreads were covered with white sugar or pink icing, which was obtained using cranberry or lingonberry juice.

Photo: russkij-sever.livejournal.com

KOZULI, a recipe from the Arkhangelsk region
Burn 1 glass of sugar, dissolve in a glass of hot water. Add 2 more cups of sugar (until completely dissolved), 150 g butter, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, cloves and soda, 1 egg and 2 yolks. Pour about 0.5 kg of flour, knead the dough so that it does not stick to your hands. Keep the dough in a saucepan and cellophane in cool place week. After that, add another 0.5 kg to the dough granulated sugar and roll it out to a thickness of 0.5 cm. Cut the rolled out dough into shapes from tin or thick paper and put it on a baking sheet greased with oil. Lubricate the gingerbread cookies with a beaten egg with water in a ratio of 1: 1 and put in the oven. Bake 5 - 7 minutes. Let the finished gingerbread cookies dry, then remove them from the baking sheet and decorate with icing.

goose pig comrade

For a long time in Rus', the custom was to put hay on the table at Christmas - in memory of the manger in which the baby Jesus was born. It was placed either under the tablecloth or in the middle of the table. Meat dishes were arranged around: the more, the better, in several rows. There was pork, and mutton, and every kind of poultry; everything was suitable for a feast. But he married christmas menu, of course, goose - whole fried, lined soaked apples And sauerkraut. Good goose cooks were chosen carefully, in trusted shops from familiar sellers. Often in holidays goose sellers, taking advantage of the rush demand, went on a swindle - that is, as explained in old cookbooks, “they injected air into it through the back hole and sewed up the hole with some art and a little trickery”. Such a puffed up goose for the role signature dish not good at all, except for the broth.

GESE OR DUCK, 1834 recipe
Having slaughtered and plucked a goose or a duck cleaner, pick out the stumps from them with a small knife, fall off the neck and wings, and take the ferns away, wash them cleaner and, seasoning with a hairpin, fry on a spit or in the oven, lubricating often oil and salt; watch it doesn't burn out.

PIG, recipe 1902
Remove offal from a well-cleaned pig, boil in water, which should be slightly salted for taste; when the giblets are cooked, chop them finely with five or more, depending on the size of the piglet, hard-boiled eggs, dilute this raw eggs and then, having stuffed the piglet, sew up the cut, coat it with oil and put it in the oven so that it is fried, when it is well reddened, then pour the juice that it gives out of itself.

Fuck the whole head

The abundance of meat on the tables was due to the fact that by Christmas in the villages the last cattle was always slaughtered so as not to feed it all winter. Such a business order existed and still exists in many countries, so the baked suckling pig or goose under golden brown cannot be considered a purely Russian Christmas dish. And yet, national differences still exist. They concern mainly used seasonings and side dishes. If in Greece, for example, a piglet is served with celery, and in Germany with stewed cabbage, then we have from time immemorial the best supplement considered to be crap. It is absolutely universal, it was served with almost all dishes of Russian cuisine: meat, fish, cold, and hot. The burning taste was often softened with sour cream, and for many years this seasoning was much more popular than the current mayonnaise.

BREAD HRENOVINA, monastic recipe
Cut the crust off the loaf rye bread, chop the crumb and brown in the oven until golden color. Peel one radish, grind in a meat grinder or in a combine. Squeeze the juice and drain, only the pulp is used. Peel the horseradish root, chop and grind in the same way. Mix all the ingredients, add vinegar and grind until the sauce becomes thick. Add honey, salt, fragrant mint or ground cloves.

Don't hit the wedge under the oatmeal pancake

The Christmas table was not complete without baking. Pies, pies, pies, kulebyaki, wickets or carols, which were presented to carolers - which was not there. Oatmeal, pancakes from oat flour. The tradition of cooking them these days obviously goes back to pre-Christian times. The period itself from Christmas to Epiphany, Sviatki, in many places was called Avsenki or Ovsenitsy. Baked pancakes on ghee and generously experimented with various spices (fillings that are baked right in the dough). Good for oatmeal was pryazhina - from the word "spin", that is, fry on a thick layer of overheated oil. This way cooking very ancient, the researchers unearthed its roots almost in the 15th century. However, it is now virtually obsolete. But the dish remained, it is especially popular in Polish and Belarusian cuisine.

PRYAZHENINA, recipe from Belarus
300 g pork on ribs, 200 g homemade sausage, 100 g bacon, 2 heads onion, 2 tbsp. tablespoons of flour, bay leaf, 1-2 cloves of garlic, salt.
Finely chop the bacon, melt the fat, remove the greaves. Fry in fat rack of pork ribs and sliced ​​sausage. Put everything in clay pot and pour over flour sauce. Darken the pot in the oven for about an hour. Before serving, grate the garlic into it.
For flour sauce fry the onion in the melted lard and gradually add 2 tbsp. tablespoons flour, pour in a thin stream hot water and bring to the consistency of sour cream.

Drink, but understand the matter

What did they drink at Christmas? If on Christmas Eve the menu was strictly regulated by the church rite, then after that everyone celebrated in accordance with their own taste and budget. This also applied to drinks - and liquors, and tinctures, and homemade wines and other intoxicating drinks, which in our time seem quite exotic. Pour 8 bottles of alcohol into a large bottle and add cinnamon 12 spools, cardamom 5 spools, cloves 4 spools, star anise 5 spools, nutmeg color 1 spool and 2 finely ground nutmeg. Wrap the bottle with washcloths and smear around with dough, three fingers thick. Put the bottle in a row for four nights in the free spirit of the stove, and take it out and shake it in the morning. After 4 days, drain and sweeten with syrup, assuming 1 1/2 pounds of sugar for every 2 bottles of casserole. The longer the casserole is stored, the better it gets. But when you need to treat a friend or a guest who has arrived from afar with it, feed him in advance as satisfyingly as possible and with the most fatty meals, and at the end of the dinner, offer him a glass of casserole: it will seem to him like nectar.

PEAR COMPOTE 18+, recipe 1809
After peeling the pears and boiling them in water, put them on a sieve, and put the skin in the same water, boil; strain through a napkin, put sugar, cinnamon, cloves and white wine there in proportion, boil the syrup and put the pears in it, let it stand until it cools, then put the pears on a dish, and, having precipitated the syrup, pour it over them.

It happened that the set table from Christmas was not cleaned until the very Epiphany - they were waiting for guests, then carolers, and at home such a regime of endless food suited them. This tradition is quite consistent with the modern scenario. New Year holidays. The main thing is to remember: after all, Christmas is a church holiday, and on such days spiritual food is preferable for a believer.

Merry and joyful Christmas holiday

Christmas holidays begin on January 6, when the Orthodox celebrate Christmas Eve. And the whole of January there are holidays: 7 - Orthodox Christmas, 13 - Generous Evening, 14 - New Year according to the Julian calendar, according to the old style, 18 is Epiphany Christmas Eve, and 19 celebrate Epiphany or Epiphany.

The evolution of the celebration of Christmas

Until the 4th century, Christmas was celebrated together with Epiphany and Baptism at the same time, because it was believed that Jesus Christ lived for the perfect number of years, and his conception occurred on the same day as the crucifixion. Counting 9 months from this date, we get December 25 in the old style or January 7 in the new one.

At Christmas time in Rus', children always gathered together and praised Jesus Christ from house to house, showing costumed or puppet shows describing various scenes from His life. Christmas time is also called Generous Evening. Then there was a rule: with everything that the owners had, give the guests. Therefore, on New Year's Eve, young people sang lavish songs and thus collected various gifts, dishes and offerings.

On Christmas Eve, the fun subsides, and the Day of the Epiphany or the baptism of the Savior in the Jordan, people collect water after the liturgy and the procession. Consecrated water - agiasma - does not deteriorate for a long time. It is used when someone is sick, in grief or trouble. This water helps to sanctify the dwelling. On Epiphany, believers bathe in a cruciform hole.

Christmas Baking Recipes

Kundyubki is a very tasty and satisfying pastry stuffed with mushrooms, onions and fat. They were baked in the oven, then poured with broth and put on a short time back to the oven. by the most simple recipe sweet pastries there were carols that were made from unleavened rye dough, stuffed with chopped apples, a curd-sugar mixture, or ordinary mashed potatoes.

Very taste and. She had to fool around for a long time, but she was different in that she was usually prepared a week before Christmas, and she could be stored for more than six weeks. Rugs were presented to all guests and, of course, in the first place - to children. Another recipe for sweet pastries -. The hostesses cooked, served on the table Home wine or beer.

At Christmas they put different and hearty meal so that the table was rich, symbolized good luck and wealth in the coming year. As a symbol of Christmas, hay or straw should be placed under a snow-white tablecloth, which reminds that Jesus Christ was born and was placed in a manger. center dish, which is placed in the center, is, and 12 dishes are placed around it, which remind of the faithful disciples of Christ - the apostles. The number of guests at the table must be even, but if an odd number of guests are invited, one empty additional device must be placed on the table.

The bright and joyful holiday of Christmas always pleases, because it reminds of those days when a star lit up in the sky, symbolizing the birth of a God-man who came to earth to save people. Therefore, let us praise Jesus Christ, who saved our world and gave hope for the resurrection!