What did ancient people eat? A simple history of food or what the ancients ate

Russian national cuisine has a very long history. It originated in the 9th century and has undergone many changes since then. The unique geographical location had a huge influence on the process of its formation. Thanks to the forests, many dishes prepared from the game that lived there appeared in it, the presence of fertile lands made it possible to grow crops, and the presence of lakes contributed to the fact that fish appeared on the tables of the local population. Today’s publication will not only tell you what they ate in Rus', but also examine several recipes that have survived to this day.

Features of formation

Since Rus' has long been a multinational state, the local population gladly learned culinary wisdom from each other. Therefore, each region of the country had its own unique recipes, many of which have survived to this day. In addition, domestic housewives did not hesitate to adopt the experience of overseas chefs, thanks to which many new dishes appeared in the domestic cuisine.

Thus, the Greeks and Scythians taught the Russians how to knead yeast dough, the Byzantines told about the existence of rice, buckwheat and many spices, and the Chinese told about tea. Thanks to the Bulgarians, local chefs learned about zucchini, eggplants and sweet peppers. And they borrowed recipes for dumplings, cabbage rolls and borscht from the Western Slavs.

During the reign of Peter I, potatoes began to be grown en masse in Rus'. Around the same time, previously inaccessible stoves and special containers designed for cooking over an open fire began to appear at the disposal of housewives.

Cereals

Experts managed to find out what they ate in Rus' before potatoes thanks to excavations carried out on the territory of ancient settlements. The texts found by scientists say that the Slavs of that time ate exclusively plant foods. They were farmers and believed in the benefits of vegetarianism. Therefore, the basis of their diet was cereals such as oats, barley, rye, wheat and millet. They were fried, soaked or ground into flour. Unleavened cakes were baked from the latter. Later, local housewives learned to make bread and various pies. Since no one knew about yeast at that time, baked goods were prepared from the so-called “sour” dough. It was started in a large vessel made of flour and river water, and then kept warm for several days.

Those who don’t know what they ate in Rus' before potatoes will find it interesting that the menu of our distant ancestors consisted of a large number of crumbly, hard-boiled porridges. In those distant times, they were cooked mainly from millet or whole peeled oats. It was steamed in ovens for a long time, and then flavored with butter, hemp or linseed oil. Rice was very rare back then and cost a lot of money. Ready-made porridges were consumed as independent dishes or as side dishes for meat or fish.

Vegetables, mushrooms and berries

For a long time, plant foods remained the main thing that those who were closely involved in agriculture ate in Rus'. The main source of protein of our distant ancestors were legumes. In addition, they grew turnips, radishes, garlic and peas on their plots. From the latter they not only cooked soups and porridges, but also baked pancakes and pies. A little later, vegetable crops such as carrots, onions, cabbage, cucumbers and tomatoes became available to Russians. Local housewives quickly learned to make various dishes from them and even began to prepare them for the winter.

Also in Rus', various berries were actively collected. They were not only eaten fresh, but also used as a base for jam. Since sugar was not available to housewives of that time, it was successfully replaced with healthier natural honey.

The Russians did not disdain mushrooms. Milk mushrooms, saffron milk caps, boletus mushrooms, boletus and white mushrooms were especially popular in that era. They were collected in the nearby forests, and then salted in huge barrels, sprinkled with aromatic dill.

Meat and fish

They lived in peace with animals for a very long time, because agricultural products were the basis of what they ate in Rus' before the arrival of the nomads. It was they who taught our distant ancestors to eat meat. But at that time it was not available to all segments of the population. Meat appeared on the tables of peasants and ordinary townspeople only on major holidays. As a rule, it was beef, horse meat or pork. Birds or game were considered less rare. Large deer carcasses were stuffed with lard and then roasted on a spit. Smaller prey like hare was supplemented with vegetables and roots and simmered in clay pots.

Over time, the Slavs mastered not only agriculture, but also fishing. Since then, they have had another option for what they could eat. In Rus' there are a lot of rivers and lakes in which it is found sufficient quantity various fish. The caught prey was dried in the sun to preserve it for a longer period.

Beverages

A special place in the menu of the ancient Slavs was given to kvass. They not only replaced water or wine, but also treated indigestion. This amazing drink was also used as a basis for preparing various dishes such as botvinya or okroshka.

Jelly was no less popular among our ancestors. It was very thick and not sweet, but sour taste. It was made from oatmeal diluted with plenty of water. The resulting mixture was first fermented, and then boiled until a thick mass was obtained, poured with honey and eaten.

Beer was in great demand in Rus'. It was brewed from barley or oats, fermented with hops and served on special holidays. Around the 17th century, the Slavs learned about the existence of tea. It was considered an overseas curiosity and was consumed on very rare occasions. Usually it was successfully replaced with more useful herbal infusions brewed with boiling water.

Beet kvass

This is one of the oldest drinks, especially popular among the Slavs. It has excellent refreshing properties and perfectly quenches thirst. To prepare it you will need:

• 1 kg beets.
• 3.5 liters of water.

The beets are peeled and rinsed. A fifth of the product processed in this way is cut into thin circles and placed on the bottom of the pan. The remaining root vegetables are immersed there entirely. All this is poured with the required volume of water and cooked until tender. Then the contents of the pan are left warm, and after three days they are put into a cold cellar. After 10-15 days, beet kvass is completely ready.

Pea mash

This dish is one of those that was eaten in the old days in Rus' by ordinary peasant families. It is prepared from very simple ingredients and has high nutritional value. To make this puree you will need:

• 1 cup dry peas.
• 2 tbsp. l. oils
• 3 cups of water.
• Salt (to taste).

The peas, sorted and washed in advance, are soaked for several hours, and then poured with salted water and boiled until soft. The completely finished product is pureed and flavored with oil.

Pork kidneys in sour cream

Those who are interested in what they ate in ancient Rus' should pay attention to this rather unusual, but very tasty dish. It goes well with various cereals and will allow you to slightly diversify your usual menu. To prepare it you will need:

• 500 g fresh pork kidneys.
• 150 g thick non-acidic sour cream.
• 150 ml water (+ a little more for cooking).
• 1 tbsp. l. flour.
• 1 tbsp. l. oils
• 1 onion.
• Any herbs and spices.

The buds, previously cleared of films, are rinsed and soaked in cold water. After three hours, they are filled with new liquid and sent to the fire. As soon as the water boils, the kidneys are removed from the pan, washed again, cut into small slices and put in the refrigerator. No earlier than an hour later, they are placed in a frying pan, which already contains flour, butter and chopped onion. All this is seasoned with spices, poured with water and simmered until cooked. Shortly before turning off the heat, the dish is supplemented with sour cream and sprinkled with chopped herbs.

Turnip chowder

This is one of the most popular dishes that our ancestors ate in Rus'. It can still be prepared today for those who love simple food. To do this you will need:

• 300 g turnips.
• 2 tbsp. l. oils
• 2 tbsp. l. thick village sour cream.
• 4 potatoes.
• 1 onion.
• 1 tbsp. l. flour.
• Water and any fresh herbs.

Pre-washed and peeled turnips are processed using a grater and placed in a deep pan. Finely chopped onion and cold water are also added there. All this is sent to the fire and boiled until half cooked. Then add potato slices to the vegetables and wait for them to soften. At the final stage, the almost finished stew is supplemented with flour and butter, boiled briefly and removed from the heat. Serve it with finely chopped herbs and fresh sour cream.

The culinary traditions of the Russian people go back to ancient times. 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 “sowed 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 it to us now in abundance.”

A little later, the ritual porridge appears - kutia. It was prepared from grains with the addition of honey. The Slavs cooked ordinary porridge from flour, for which they ground grains, in water or milk. Bread was baked from flour - first unleavened flatbread, and then rolls and pies cooked with honey.
In Rus' they also cultivated garden crops. The most popular were cabbage, cucumbers, turnips, rutabaga and radish.

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

Year 907 - in the chronicle, among the monthly taxes, wine, bread, meat, fish and vegetables are named (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 eastern countries, and honey was not only an everyday food product, but also an item of foreign trade.

Year 971 - during the famine, prices were so high that a horse's head cost half a hryvnia. It is interesting that the chronicler is not talking about beef or pork, but about horse meat. Although this happens during the forced wintering of Prince Svyatoslav’s troops on the way from Greece, the fact is still noteworthy. This means that there was no ban on eating horse meat in Rus', but it was probably consumed in exceptional cases. This is also evidenced by the relatively small proportion of horse bones in kitchen waste that archaeologists find.

Typically, to characterize what we would now call a “price index,” the cost of everyday products is indicated. Thus, 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 livestock and animals, and bread, meat, fish, vegetables, honey and kvass were carried around the city and distributed to the people. The squad grumbled that they 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 “tsezh” and cook jelly.

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

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

For a long time, cooking was a purely family affair. As a rule, they were led by the oldest woman in the family. Professional chefs first appeared at the princely courts, and then in monastery refectories.

Cooking in Rus' became a special specialty only in the 11th century, although mention of professional cooks is found in chronicles already in the 10th century.

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

The monastic cooks were very skilled. Prince Izyaslav, who visited the borders of the Russian land and saw a lot, especially loved the “meals” of the Pechersk monks. Even a description of the work of cooks of that era has been preserved:

“And he clothed himself in sackcloth, and a retinue of sackcloth, and began to create ugliness, and began to help the cooks, cooking for the brothers... And after matins he went to the cookhouse, and prepared fire, water, wood, and came to take the rest of the cooks from.”

During the times of Kievan Rus, cooks were in the service of princely courts and rich houses. Some of them even had several cooks. This is evidenced by the description of one of the houses of a rich man of the 12th century, which mentions many “sokachiy”, that is, cooks, “working and doing in the dark.”

Russian chefs sacredly preserved traditions 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 Philaret and boyar Boris Ivanovich Morozov, monastic consumables books, etc. They often mention folk dishes - cabbage soup, fish soup, porridge, pies, pancakes, kulebyaki, pies, jelly, kvass, medki and others.

The nature of the preparation of Russian cuisine is largely determined by the peculiarities of the Russian oven, which, as a hearth, has faithfully served both ordinary city people, noble boyars, and townsman peasants for centuries. It is impossible to imagine Ancient Rus' both without log huts and without the famous Russian stove.

The Russian stove with its mouth was always turned towards the door, 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 smelled slightly of smoke, the Russian oven also had advantages: 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 stewed and baked dishes, a wide range of baked goods - pies, krupeniki, pies, kulebyak, etc.

Since the 16th century, we can talk about the differences between monastic, rural and royal cuisine. In the monastery, vegetables, herbs, herbs and fruits played the main role. They formed the basis of the monks' diet, especially during fasting. Rural cuisine was less rich and varied, but also exquisite in its own way: at least 15 dishes were supposed to be served at a festive dinner. Lunch in general is 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 made of strong oak planks, covered with an embroidered tablecloth: cold snack, soup, second course - in non-Lenten times usually meat - and pies or pies, which were eaten “for dessert”.
The snacks were very different, but the main ones were all kinds of salads - a mixture of finely chopped vegetables, usually boiled, to which you could add anything you wanted - from an apple to cold veal. From them came, in particular, the vinaigrette known to every Russian household. By the end of the 17th century, jelly (from the word “icy”, that is, cold) became popular: firstly, jelly must be cold, otherwise it will spread over the plate; secondly, it was usually eaten in winter, from Christmas to Epiphany, that is, in the coldest time of the year). Then the ears appeared from different fish, corned beef and sausages. Rassolnik amazed foreigners with its refined taste. Cabbage soup - remember the proverb: “Shchi and porridge are our food” - so, cabbage soup was served with mushrooms, fish, and pies.

The most popular drinks were berry and fruit juices with fruit drinks, as well as tinctures. Medovukha - a drink based on bee honey - was stronger, and then vodka appeared. But since ancient times, bread kvass has remained the main Russian drink. They made it with everything - 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 breaks, each of which in turn consisted 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 chopping, grinding and crushing of food were used only in fillings for pies. And even then very moderately. Fish for pies, for example, was not crushed, but layered.

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

In the 17th century, the order of serving dishes began to change (this applies to rich festive table). Now it consisted of 6-8 breaks and only one dish was served during each break:
- hot dishes (cabbage soup, soup, fish soup);
- cold (okroshka, botvinya, jelly, jellied fish, corned beef);
- roast (meat, poultry);
- vegetable (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: “The table in the outfit (from Sytny Dvor) was drinking about Vel. Sovereign: 1st supply: romanei, bastra, renskago, for purchase; 2nd feed: malmazei, mushkatelya, alkan, po kupku zh; 3rd serving: cypress, French wine, church wine, by purchase; red honey: 1 serving: cherry, raspberry, currant, ladleful; 2nd supply: 2 ladles of raspberry honey, 2 ladles of boyar honey; 3rd serving: 2 ladles of juniper honey, 2 ladles of wild cherry honey; white honey: 1 serving: 2 ladlefuls of molasses honey with cloves, a ladleful of ladle honey; 2nd feed: 2 ladles of honey with a musket, a ladle of honey ladle; 3rd serving: 2 ladles of honey with cardamom, 2 ladles of honey ladle. In total about the Great Sovereign: romanea, bastra, renskago, malmazei, muskately, alkana, cinnareia, French wine, church wine, 6 mugs each, and 6 glasses of vodka; red honeys: cherry, raspberry, currant, stone, bird cherry, juniper, scalded, by the ladle; white honey: ladle with nails, with musket, with cardamom, 8 mugs each, 9 mugs of sugar. About the boyars, and about the outskirts, and about the Duma people, and about ambassadors, and about the royal nobles: 2 mugs of aniseed vodka from Romanea, cinnamon, and 8 mugs of boyar vodka, 5 buckets of Romanea, 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 register.

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

The formation of Russian cuisine was also influenced by cultural exchange with neighboring peoples. Immediately after the baptism of Slavic writing came to Rus' from Bulgaria, books began to be translated and copied, and not only liturgical books. 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' joined the culture of Bulgaria and Byzantium, Russian people actively assimilate the heritage of ancient Greece, Rome and the Ancient East. Along with the development of spiritual and cultural life, the introduction of church canons in Rus' 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 - “Saracenic millet” (rice) and buckwheat.

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

The influence on Russian cuisine and our eastern neighbors - India was no less strong. China, Persia. The first Russian people who visited these countries brought back many new impressions from there. The Russians learned a lot from the famous book by Afanasy Nikitin “Walking across Three Seas” (1466-1472), containing a description of products unfamiliar in Rus' - dates, ginger, coconut, pepper, cinnamon. And the book by Vasily Gagara (written in 1634-1637) broadened the horizons of our compatriots. They learned about the products that were consumed by residents of the Caucasus and the Middle East. Here are his observations about how sugar production was carried out in the East: “Yes, in the same Egypt, reeds were born, and sugar is made from it. And they dig reeds near the sea... and when the reeds ripen, eat them as you would eat honey from a honeycomb.”

But our ancestors mastered not only practical cooking techniques. They also thought about the essence of the phenomena occurring. A long time ago they mastered the secrets of preparing yeast dough, which is mentioned in the chronicles: the monks of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra knew how to prepare custard bread that did not go stale for a long time.

Already in the XI-XII centuries. The Russians knew many rather complex techniques for preparing kvass, honey, and hops. They can be found in famous ancient Russian herbal books, as well as in various “lives”. Thus, kvass was widely known - rye, honey, apple, yashny, 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 and yeast, as evidenced by numerous instructions of the ancients:

“Pound and grind the wheat, and sow the flour, and knead the dough and leaven.” Or: “And they should ferment their kvass with sour grounds, not with yeast.” “Kvass separates copulation and pasting of dough and makes bread liquid and loaf.”

And other literary sources confirm the knowledge of Russian people in the field of food. Thus, the “Book of the verb cool vertograd” (XVII century) contains numerous discussions about the differences, for example, between cow’s milk and goat’s, hare’s and bear’s meat, etc. It is curious that even then the Russian people had an idea about the antiseptic properties of protein : “Egg whites are put into medicine... for sores and all sorts of subcutaneous wounds. Also contributes protein to diaper lining, in hot water Apply soaking” (section “about chicken eggs”).

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

Stuffed turnips. The turnips are washed, boiled in water until soft, cooled, the skin is scraped off, and the core is cut out. The removed pulp is finely chopped, minced meat is added and the turnip is filled with this filling. Sprinkle with grated cheese on top, pour over butter and bake.

Oatmeal jelly. Pour warm water over the cereal and leave it in a warm place for a day. Then strain and squeeze. Add salt and sugar to the resulting liquid and boil, stirring continuously, until thickened. Add milk to the hot jelly, stir, pour into greased plates, and refrigerate. When the jelly has hardened, cut it into portions and serve with cold boiled milk or yogurt.

"Peas in a block." The peas are completely boiled and pounded, the resulting puree is seasoned with salt and shaped (you can use molds, cups, etc., greased with oil). The formed pea puree is placed on a plate and poured with sunflower oil and fried onions, sprinkled with herbs.

Peasant bread soup. Small dry crusts white bread fry in fat with finely chopped parsley and finely chopped onion, then add water, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Stirring continuously, pour the mashed eggs into the soup in a thin stream. This soup, which tastes like meat, should be served immediately.

Sbiten-zhzhenka. To make the burnt sugar, heat the sugar in a spoon over low heat until a dark brown syrup forms. Dissolve honey in 4 glasses 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 burnt liquid for color. Serve hot.

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

10. What did people eat in ancient times? Plant food

If the situation with the meat food of ancient man is more or less clear, at least due to the preserved bones of the animals that made up his diet, then in matters of plant food one can only make assumptions based on climatic conditions and later ethnographic data. The problem is that not only the remains of the plant food itself have not been preserved, but also any devices for its extraction. And such devices probably existed: a person needed sticks, something like a hoe, for digging up roots, vessels, baskets or bags. All this was made from plants and has not survived to this day.

However, today researchers of primitive society have no doubt that gathering and plant foods occupied an important place in the life and diet of ancient man. There is indirect evidence of this: the presence of remains of plant food on the teeth of fossil skulls, the medically proven human need for a number of substances contained primarily in plant food, the fact that purely hunting tribes that survived until recently always, albeit in limited quantities , consume foraging products. After all, in order to switch to agriculture everywhere in the future, a person had to have an established taste for products of plant origin.

Let us also remember that paradise in the religions of many ancient peoples is a beautiful garden in which delicious fruits and plants grow in abundance. And it is the eating of forbidden fruits that leads to major disasters. Among the Sumerians, this is Dilmun - a divine garden in which the goddess of all things, Ninhursag, grows eight plants, but they are eaten by the god Enki, for which he receives a mortal curse from her. The biblical Eden is filled with beautiful plants that delight the taste of the first people, and only by eating the forbidden fruit are Adam and Eve expelled from the fruit-vegetable paradise and deprived of eternal life.

As already mentioned, in accordance with modern dietary concepts and ideas about proper nutrition - one might even say, with a modern worldview, which also includes the politically correct ideas of today - scientists are increasingly writing about the natural preference of ancient man for plant foods, as well as lean meat and products of marine gathering (shellfish and others). Naturally, in these cases, reference is made to the African, Australian and Polynesian peoples, whose way of life was carefully studied by scientists in the 19th and 20th centuries. This kind of data is extremely important for creating a complete picture of human nutrition, although, of course, it is hardly possible to draw direct parallels between peoples living in subequatorial, tropical and subtropical climates, and people of the Upper Paleolithic era, whose climate was quite harsh and cold even in interglacial period.

The study of the African Bushmen tribe yielded interesting results. Most of the food they consume, up to 80 percent, is plant-based. This is the result of gathering, which is carried out only by women. The Bushmen do not know hunger, receiving enough food per person every day, although they do not grow anything themselves. The Bushmen explain their reluctance to engage in farming simply: “Why should we grow plants when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?” Indeed, mongongo trees produce a constant and abundant harvest all year round. At the same time, the food of the Bushmen tribes, on the extraction of which they spend no more than three days a week, is quite diverse: they consume from 56 to 85 types of plants - roots, stems, leaves, fruits, berries, nuts, seeds. The relative ease of food allows them to spend a lot of time in idleness, which is uncharacteristic for primitive tribes forced to constantly worry about getting food.

It is clear that such a situation is possible only in places with an appropriate climate and year-round abundance of plants, however, it also speaks of something: life is primitive by modern standards, without using the achievements of any “revolutions” of mankind (agrarian, industrial, scientific- technical), does not always mean hunger, hard daily work and lack of free time for anything else, since all the aspirations of the tribe come down to feeding themselves.

Another interesting moment from the life of the Bushmen is also interesting. Despite the fact that gathering, a female occupation, supplies the majority of the tribe’s diet, hunting, a male occupation, is considered more important and prestigious, and meat food is valued much higher than plant food. Hunting and everything connected with it, including hunting products and their distribution, occupy a central place in the life of the community. Songs, dances, stories passed from mouth to mouth are dedicated to hunting; religious rituals and ceremonies are associated with it. An important role in this is played by rituals that, in all likelihood, go back to ancient times. The hunter who has killed the animal is responsible for distributing the spoils; he provides meat to all members of the tribe without exception, including those who did not participate in the hunt. This shows that even among the fruit abundance, meat retained its superiority and symbolism.

But be that as it may, plant foods were indispensable in the “kitchen” of primitive man. Let us make several assumptions about its composition, based on written evidence from a later era and the preserved practice of consuming certain types of wild plants.

The question of the appearance of man interested all nations; there are countless myths, tales, legends and traditions on this subject. It is characteristic in itself that all peoples recognized the fact that there was a time, and a long one, when man did not exist. Then - by divine desire, by oversight, by mistake, by drunkenness, by deception, as a result of the marriage of deities, with the help of a sacred animal or bird, from clay, wood, earth, water, stone, emptiness, gas, space, foam , dragon tooth, egg - a person is born and endowed with a soul. With his birth, as a rule, the mythological golden age on Earth ends, since a person immediately begins to commit actions that are wrong from the highest point of view.

Ancient mythology in the matter of the creation of man is similar to other ancient beliefs. According to one myth, the appearance of man on Earth is associated with the activity of the titan Prometheus, who gathered people from clay, earth or stone in the image and likeness of the gods, and the goddess Athena breathed a soul into them. Another myth tells how, after the Great Flood, the daughter of Prometheus and her husband create people by throwing stones behind their backs, and Prometheus himself infuses them with a soul. The inhabitants of Thebes preferred the version about their emergence from the teeth of a dragon defeated by the Phoenician king Cadmus.

At the same time, some ancient authors came quite close to the scientific concept of the emergence and existence of primitive man and society. First of all, we should mention Titus Lucretius Cara and his essay “On the Nature of Things.” We know very little about the life of Lucretius: he lived in the 1st century BC. e.; according to St. Jerome, whose activity took place five centuries later, “drunk with a love potion, Lucretius lost his mind, in bright intervals he wrote several books, later published by Cicero, and took his own life.” So, maybe it was the “love potion” that revealed to Lucretius pictures of the past?

Lucretius considers the ancient “breed of people” to be stronger:

Their skeleton consisted of bones, both dense and large;

His powerful muscles and veins held him together more firmly.

They were little accessible to the effects of cold and heat

Or unusual food and all sorts of bodily ailments.

For a long time (“many circles of the sun’s revolution”) man wandered like a “wild beast.” People consumed everything as food

What the sun gave them, the rains that she herself gave birth to

If the earth was free, it completely satisfied all their desires.

Plant food was the most important for them:

For the most part they found food for themselves

Between the oak trees with acorns, and those that are now ripening -

Arbuta berries in winter and crimson color

They are blushing, you see - the soil yielded larger and more abundant soil.

They also hunted animals with stone tools, using the driven hunting method:

Relying on the untold strength in the arms and legs,

They drove and beat wild animals through the forests

With a strong heavy club they threw well-aimed stones at them;

They fought many, but tried to hide from others.

They took water from springs and rivers, and lived in forests, groves or mountain caves. Lucretius claims that at this time people did not yet know fire, did not wear skins and walked naked. They did not respect the “common good”, that is, they did not know social relations and lived in free love, not knowing marriage ties:

Women were inclined to love either by mutual passion or

The brute strength of men and irrepressible lust,

Or the payment is such as acorns, berries, pears.

The first serious changes, according to Lucretius, occurred when man mastered fire, began to build dwellings and wear clothes from skins. The institution of marriage appears, the family emerges. All this led to the fact that “then the human race began to soften for the first time.” Finally, human speech appeared. Further, the process of human development accelerated: social inequality, cattle breeding, arable farming, navigation, city construction arose, and a state appeared. But that is another story.

Lucretius explained the mastery of fire in a completely materialistic way - the same way it is explained today:

Know that fire was brought to earth for the first time by mortals.

Was lightning.

Then people learned to make fire by rubbing wood against wood. And finally:

Afterwards, cook the food and soften it with heat from the flame

The sun guided them, for people saw that by force

Much in the field is softened by the scorching rays.

Day by day we learned to improve both food and life

Those, through fire and all kinds of innovations,

Who was the most talented and intelligent among all?

Long before Lucretius, the philosopher Democritus, who lived in the 5th–4th centuries BC. e., presented a similar picture of the life of ancient man: “As for the first-born people, they say about them that they led a disorderly and bestial lifestyle. Acting [each on his own] alone, they went out in search of food and obtained for themselves the most suitable grass and wild fruits of trees.” It is a pity that the great philosopher paid so little attention to the topic of ancient nutrition, but let us note that, according to Democritus, ancient man was a vegetarian. One of the founders of materialistic philosophy, Democritus, believed exclusively in the gradual development of man, who emerged from the beast-like state not thanks to a miracle, but due to special talent (this is what Lucretius poetically called “gift”): “Little by little, taught by experience, they became winter seek refuge in caves and store in reserve those fruits that can be preserved. [Next] they became aware of the use of fire, and gradually they became acquainted with other useful things [for life], then they invented arts and [everything] else that could be useful for social life. Indeed, need itself served as a teacher for people in everything, instructing them accordingly in the knowledge of each [thing]. [Thus need taught everything] a living creature richly gifted by nature, possessing hands capable of doing anything, a mind and a quick-witted soul.”

Finally, the ancient Roman poet Ovid, who wrote at the turn of the new era, is already completely “ours”, it was not for nothing that he died in exile on the shores of the Black Sea, paints a completely paradisiacal life of ancient people who fed exclusively on the gifts of nature:

People living safely tasted the sweet peace.

Also, free from tribute, untouched by a sharp hoe,

She was not injured by the plow, the land itself brought them everything,

Completely satisfied with the food received without coercion,

They picked fruits from the trees, picked mountain strawberries,

Thorn, and mulberry berries hanging on strong branches,

Or the harvest of acorns that fell from the trees of Jupiter.

It was spring forever; pleasant, cool breath

The zephyr flowers that had never been sown tenderly lived.

Moreover: the land brought crops without plowing;

Without resting, the fields were golden in heavy ears,

Rivers of milk flowed, rivers of nectar flowed,

Golden honey also dripped, oozing from the green oak.

Among plant foods, Lucretius twice mentions the acorn, once as a possible payment for love. Ovid also sings of acorns. Horace joins them, mentioning the acorn as the main component of the food of ancient man:

People at the beginning, when, like herds of dumb animals,

They crawled on the ground - sometimes behind dark holes,

Then they fought for a handful of acorns with their fists and nails...

Most likely, this is not just poetic fantasy; the acorn really could have been one of the main plant foods of ancient man. The oak has been known since ancient times and has been adjacent to humans for many millennia. With the beginning of the last retreat of glaciers, oak forests and groves firmly took their place in Europe. Oak is a sacred tree among many peoples.

If we can only make assumptions about the composition of the plant food of Paleolithic people, then later finds confirm the widespread use of acorns as food, including in the form of flour and products made from it. Archaeological data related to the Trypillian culture (between the Danube and Dnieper rivers, 6th–3rd millennium BC) indicate that people dried acorns in ovens, ground them into flour and baked bread from it.

Myths have preserved for us the special role that acorns played as food, on the one hand, civilized, and on the other, traditional and patriarchal. According to the legend conveyed by the ancient Greek writer and geographer Pausanias, the first man “Pelasgus, having become king, came up with the idea of ​​​​building huts so that people would not freeze and get wet in the rain, and on the other hand, would not suffer from the heat; in the same way, he invented tunics from sheep skins... In addition, Pelasgus weaned people from eating green leaves of trees, grass and roots, which were not only inedible, but sometimes even poisonous; in exchange for this, he gave them the fruits of oak trees for food, precisely those that we call acorns.” Pelasgus became king not just anywhere, but in Arcadia - the central region of the Peloponnese; It is believed that the original inhabitants of Greece, the Pelasgians, lived compactly there for a long time, without mixing with other tribes. Already for the ancient Greeks themselves, Arcadia was a symbol of patriarchy, antiquity, untouched by civilization, a fragment of the times of the Golden Age.

Herodotus back in the 5th century BC. e. called the inhabitants of Arcadia “acorn-eaters”: “There are many acorn-eaters in Arcadia...”

It should be noted that there are many types of oak trees. The most “tasty” is considered to be holm oak, an evergreen tree currently growing in southern Europe and Western Asia. Its fruits, sweet-tasting acorns, are still used to this day in the traditional cuisine of certain nations.

Ancient authors testify to the benefits and widespread use of acorns. Thus, Plutarch extolled the virtues of the oak, arguing that “of all wild trees the oak bears the best fruit, and of the garden trees the strongest. Not only was bread baked from his acorns, but he also provided honey for drinking...”

The medieval Persian physician Avicenna in his treatise writes about the healing properties of acorns, which help with various diseases, in particular stomach diseases, bleeding, as a remedy for various poisons, including the “poison of Armenian arrows.” He writes that “there are people who [nevertheless] are accustomed to eating [acorns], and even make bread from them, which does not harm them, and benefit from it.”

The ancient Roman writer Macrobius claims that the acorn of Zeus was called a walnut and “since this kind of tree has [such] nuts that are more pleasant to the taste than the acorn, those ancients who considered [this nut] excellent and similar to an acorn, and itself a tree worthy of God, they called this fruit the acorn of Jupiter.”

There are known tribes of California Indians whose main food was acorns; They were mainly engaged in collecting them. These Indians knew many ways to process, store and prepare various types of food from acorns and, thanks to their inexhaustible supplies, did not experience hunger.

It must be said that already in Antiquity, the acorn was associated not only with the ancient golden age, as the food of the first people; it was the food of the poor, a cruel necessity in times of famine. It largely retained this meaning in subsequent eras until recently; in particular, it is known that acorn flour was mixed in when baking bread during the Second World War. In Russia, by the way, acorn coffee was produced relatively recently.

Ancient authors also mention arbuta, or strawberry, as the main delicacies of the ancients. This is a plant from the heather family, its fruits are somewhat reminiscent of strawberries. It is still found quite widely in Eurasia growing wild. Typically, ancient authors expressed doubts about the edibility of strawberries, but this did not stop people from eating its fruits.

The ancient Greek writer Athenaeus, in his famous work “The Feast of the Wise Men,” reports: “Calling a certain tree a dwarf cherry, Asclepiad of Myraleia writes the following: “In the land of Bithynia grows a dwarf cherry tree, the root of which is small. Actually, this is not a tree, because it is no larger than a rose bush. Its fruits are indistinguishable from cherries. However, large quantities of these berries are heavy, like wine, and cause headaches.” This is what Asclepiades writes; It seems to me that he is describing a strawberry tree. Its berries grow on the same tree, and anyone who eats more than seven berries gets a headache.”

It has been suggested that the fruits of the arbuta, also known as the strawberry tree, were used as an intoxicating agent that not only satiated the stomach of the ancient man, but also helped him enter the trance state necessary for performing rituals, or simply relax, replacing or accompanying an intoxicating drink. But modern reference books recognize this plant as edible, that is, they deny its ability to put a person into a trance; one inevitably has to conclude that the arbuta of antiquity and the arbuta of today are, quite possibly, two different plants.

Another heat-loving wild plant, known since ancient times, is the lotus. Various plants are clearly mentioned under this name in Antiquity. Herodotus writes about Egyptian lotuses: “However, to make food cheaper, they came up with something else. When the river begins to flood and the fields are flooded, many lilies grow in the water, which the Egyptians call lotus; The Egyptians cut these lilies, dry them in the sun, then pound the seed grains, which look like poppies from a lotus flower sac, and bake bread from them over a fire. The root of this plant is also edible, quite pleasant to the taste, round, the size of an apple.”

Ancient Greek botanist of the 4th century BC. e. Theophrastus writes about the lotus-shrubs, common in northern Africa and southern Europe: “As for the “lotus”, the tree is very special: tall, the size of a pear or slightly lower, with leaves in cuts similar to the leaves of a kermes oak, with black wood. There are many types of it, differing in fruits. These fruits are the size of a bean; When ripe, they change color, like grapes. They grow like myrtle berries: in a thick bunch on the shoots. The so-called “lotophages” grow a “lotus” with fruits that are sweet, tasty, harmless and even beneficial for the stomach. The ones that don’t have seeds are tastier: there is such a variety. They also make wine from them."

Odysseus encountered “lotophages”:

On the tenth day we sailed

To the land of lotophages, living only on flower food.

Going out onto solid ground and stocking up on fresh water,

Near the fast ships, the comrades sat down to dine.

After we had thoroughly enjoyed our food and drink,

I ordered my faithful companions to go and scout,

What kind of tribe of bread-eating men lives in this region?

I chose two husbands and added the herald as the third.

They immediately set off on their journey and soon came to the lot eaters.

The death of those lotophages to our comrades is not at all

They didn’t plan it, but they only gave them the lotus to taste.

Whoever tastes of its fruit, equal in sweetness to honey,

He doesn’t want to announce himself or return,

But, remaining among the husbands of lot eaters forever, he wishes

Eat the lotus, stopping and thinking about your return.

By force I brought them back to the ships, sobbing.

And in our hollow ships, he tied them up and laid them under the benches.

Since then, the islands of lotivores have been mentioned as synonymous with temptation and pleasure.

Herodotus also writes about island lotophages, different from the Egyptians, who consume lotus flour: “...Lotophages feed exclusively on lotus fruits. The size of [the lotus fruit] is approximately equal to the fruit of the mastic tree, and in sweetness it is somewhat similar to the date. Lotus eaters also make wine from it.”

Another object of collecting by the ancient people who inhabited Eurasia during the Paleolithic era could be the chilim water chestnut, which contains a white kernel under a hard black shell. The remains of this nut, which is very valuable from a nutritional point of view, are found everywhere in the settlements of primitive man. This plant was consumed both raw and boiled, and baked in ash; it was also ground into cereal and flour. Chilim grows on the surface of lakes, swamps, and river backwaters. Back in the middle of the 20th century, it was quite popular in some places food product. It was sold in bags in markets in the Volga region, Krasnodar region, Gorky region, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Nowadays, chilim is widespread in India and China, where they are artificially breeding it in swamps and lakes.

It is obvious that acorns, strawberries, lotus and other mentioned plants grew in temperate to subtropical (Mediterranean) climates, that is, they served as food supplements for hunters of wild bulls, red deer, roe deer, wild pigs and other animals.

Mammoth and reindeer hunters diversified their food with other plant “supplements”. One of the most popular food plants Siberia, Far East and Central Asia there was the sarana, or wild lily, of which many species are known. Chinese ancient sources report that the peoples of South and especially Southeast Asia “collect pine fruits (cones) and cut red wild lily, the qin plant, medicinal and other roots for food.”

There is evidence that the peoples of the Urals and Siberia in ancient times paid tribute to the Golden Horde, among other things, with the roots of saran, which was highly valued by the Mongols. This plant was widespread among the Siberian hunting tribes, as stated by all Russian travelers who described the life of the peoples of Siberia in the 18th–19th centuries. Thus, G. Miller mentioned that among the Siberian plants used by local residents, the most important is sarana - the “sweet as a turnip” root of field lilies, growing everywhere in Southern and Central Siberia.

According to the observations of S.P. Krasheninnikov, the Kamchadals dug saran (he lists at least six species - “goose saran”, “hairy saran”, “saran bunting”, “round saran”, etc.) in the tundra in the fall and stored it for the winter ; Women harvested it, as well as other plants. An interesting note from a Russian traveler: “They don’t eat everything out of hunger, but when they have enough food.” Thus, one should not reduce the entire nutrition of hunting tribes solely to satisfying the body in proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals - they consumed plants simply because they seemed tasty. About the Kamchadals, Krasheninnikov also wrote that “these steamed sarans eat the best food besides them, and especially with steamed deer or lamb fat, they don’t expect to find them.”

The tundra, which at first glance seemed sparse in vegetation, provided many tasty and healthy additives to the meat diet of hunters. They were eaten fresh in the short summer and dried for the long winter. Among the plants popular among the Siberian peoples was fireweed, from which the core of the stem was removed with shells and dried, laid out in the sun or in front of a fire. They also collected and ate different berries: “shiksha, honeysuckle, blueberry, cloudberry and lingonberry” (shiksha is crowberry, or crowberry, a northern berry, hard, bitter in taste), they used birch or willow bark, calling this bark “oak” for some reason. Krasheninnikov describes the process of making this, as it was believed, delicacy: “Women sit down in twos and finely chop off the crust with hatchets, as if they were crumbling noodles, and eat... instead of sweets they use it, and send chopped oak to each other as gifts.”

Ya. I. Lindenau noted in the first half of the 18th century that the Yukaghirs eat “the underbark of birch and larch, which they tear into thin pieces and boil. This food has a pleasant bitterness and is nutritious.” The Lamuts (an outdated name for the Evens), according to Lindenau, ate various roots and herbs: “.. They either dry them or eat them raw. Dried herbs are finely ground and stored instead of cereals for later use.” When boiled, they eat fireweed, leaves and roots of wild beets, and seaweed. “Pine nuts and young cedar buds are dried, then ground and eaten instead of cereals.”

The German researcher of the Siberian peoples G. Miller believed that the indigenous Siberian peoples eat plant foods “out of need.” According to him, the collection of wild garlic (ramson) and wild onions, hogweed and hogweed was widespread among various tribes; These plants were also popular among the Russian population, who collected and prepared them, as well as among the Pomors. In the spring, residents of Siberia scraped off the inner layer of tree bark, dried and crushed it, adding it to various dishes.

In general, plant foods in arctic and temperate climatic regions were most often used as an additive to the main meat product or by-product. Thus, among the Yakuts, porridge cooked from blood, pine bark flour and saran was considered a delicacy. A traditional dish indigenous people of Chukotka - emrat, the bark of young shoots of polar willow. As G. Miller writes, for emrat, “the bark is beaten with a hammer from the stem of the branch, finely chopped together with frozen deer liver or blood. The dish is sweet and pleasant to the taste.” Among the Eskimos, finely chopped seal meat with fermented polar willow leaves and a mixture of sour herbs with fat are popular: “The herbs are fermented in a vessel, then mixed with seal fat and frozen.”

An unconditional part of the diet of primitive man was wild legumes and grains; It was they who became the basis of agriculture. But since wild legumes and grains were almost completely replaced by similar domestic crops, it is quite difficult to find traces of their use in later eras.

Excavations carried out in the Franchti cave (Greece, Peloponnese) indicate that 10 thousand years ago its inhabitants, hunters of wild ox and red deer, collected wild legumes - lentils and vetch (a type of wild pea). And a little later they began to collect wild grains (barley, oats). It has been suggested that the inhabitants of the cave, who can be considered the first farmers in Europe, began to grow legumes before cereals.

Eating wild plants (and in general only plant foods) was considered a sign of poverty at the dawn of human civilization. Athenaeus quotes Alexis, a poet of the 4th–3rd centuries BC. e.:

We are all waxy pale

They were already covered with hunger.

All our food consists of beans,

Lupine and greenery...

There are turnips, vetches and acorns.

There are vetch peas and bulba onions,

Cicadas, wild pear, peas…

Note that grains and legumes were consumed primarily in the southern regions of Eurasia, while the indigenous peoples of Siberia showed no inclination either to collect wild plants or to grow cultivated plants. Here one could refer to climatic conditions that did not allow grain to be grown, but many Siberian lands were successfully sown with grain in the 19th century, when Russian settlers arrived there. Therefore, the reason is not climate.

Slavic peoples gathered wild herbs and grains were not neglected; Their collection of herbs was also of a ritual nature, and dishes made from herbs were loved by the villagers, as they added variety to their usual diet. Thus, Belarusians prepared the dish “lapeni” in the spring; it consisted of various herbs, among which were nettle, cow parsnip, hogweed (called “borscht”), quinoa, sorrel, and sow thistle. It is interesting that back in the 19th century this dish was prepared in an old, almost primitive way: they put the collected vegetation in wooden or birch bark vessels, filled them with water and threw stones heated on coals into them.

In the Russian North, the collection of wild herbs was often part of a traditional holiday, such as the collection of wild onions in the Vyatka and Vologda provinces. They ate it raw, less often boiled. The collection of wild herbs at the beginning of Peter's Lent was accompanied by youth festivities. Among the wild plants popular among the Eastern Slavs in the recent past, we must mention sorrel, the sour leaves of which were eaten raw, the so-called hare cabbage and wild asparagus, which, as D.K. Zelenin wrote, “sometimes all spring feeds entire families of poor people who do not have of bread. This plant is eaten both raw and boiled."

In some areas of northwestern Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Germany, they ate the wild cereal manna. Its grains were used to make cereal, which was called Prussian or Polish semolina. It produced “porridge, highly swelling, pleasant to the taste and nutritious.”

Of all the above, two plants belonging to the amaryllis family have been companions of people since ancient times, at least the last five thousand years - everywhere, throughout the Eurasian continent and northern Africa, regardless of climatic conditions, first in the wild, then grown in the garden. These are onions and garlic, both bulbous families; they were especially singled out and various wonderful qualities were attributed to them. They have an important role in mythological constructions, although in general plants, supposedly consumed by man of the pre-agricultural period, very rarely became objects of magical actions.

Garlic and onions have sometimes been confused and even mistaken for one plant; in different versions of the same ancient texts we can talk about both garlic and onions - namely onions. Leeks and shallots are later achievements of civilization, and for this reason there is not a word about them in either myths or manuscripts.

Garlic and onions (primarily garlic) are those few plants that have the honor of being an object of religious veneration and part of a sacrifice. In ancient Egyptian tombs dating back to the 3rd millennium BC. e., they find not only images of garlic and onions on the walls, but also very realistic clay models of garlic. The Egyptians made extensive use of garlic and onions in funeral rites; When preparing the body for burial, dried heads of garlic and onions were placed on the eyes, ears, legs, chest and lower abdomen. By the way, dried heads of garlic were also found among the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Roman poet of the 1st century AD. e. Juvenal was ironic about such a biased attitude of the Egyptians towards amaryllis:

Onions and leeks cannot be desecrated there by biting with the teeth.

What kind of holy peoples are in whose gardens will be born

Such deities!

The Byzantine chronicler George Amartol speaks about the same thing, albeit in a slightly different way. In his Chronicle, compiled in the 9th century, listing the pagan beliefs of various peoples of antiquity, he condemns the Egyptians to a greater extent than others: “Compared with other peoples, their idolatry has increased to such an extent that they are not only oxen and goats. , they served dogs and monkeys, but also garlic, and onions, and many other things regular greens they were called gods and worshiped (them) out of great wickedness.”

The veneration of garlic is also known in Rus'. In the “Word of a certain lover of Christ and zealot for the right faith,” which researchers date back to the 11th century, the author exposes the pagan customs of his contemporaries, who, as a sign of veneration of their gods, put garlic in bowls: “... and garlic cloves are created by God - whenever anyone has feast, especially at weddings, then they put it in buckets and cups, and drink it while having fun about their idols.”

Garlic has long been considered a symbol of fertility and therefore was widely used in ancient wedding rites: “At weddings, Slovenians put shame and garlic in buckets to drink” (by shame, according to B. A. Rybakov, small phallic idols made of wood were meant). Garlic retained its importance during weddings and later in life. So, in the 19th century, when dressing a bride for a wedding in the Russian North, they hung “a Sunday prayer (“May God rise again”), written on a piece of paper and folded, on her chest, garlic and vitriol were sewn into a rag.”

The tradition of sacrifices and veneration of onions and garlic was preserved for a long time among other Slavic peoples, as A. N. Afanasyev writes about. Thus, in Bulgaria, on St. George’s Day, “every householder takes his lamb, goes home and roasts it on a spit, and then brings it, along with bread (called bogovitsa), garlic, onions and sour milk, to Mount St. George." A similar custom was widespread in the 19th century in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In Russia, on the first Savior in the villages, “grandfathers blessed carrots, garlic, and arable land.” That is, garlic was quite legally consecrated by the church.

Well, how can we not remember the famous Russian island of Buyan, which for several decades now researchers of Russian antiquity have been trying to identify with real geographical objects. The sacred oak grows here, the world tree on which Koshchei’s heart is hidden. Here is also the “belflammable” sacred stone Alatyr, “the father of all stones”, endowed magical properties. Healing rivers flow from under Alatyr all over the world. On the island there is also a world throne, a maiden sitting who heals wounds, a wise snake Garafena who asks riddles, and a magical bird Gagana with an iron beak and copper claws who gives bird's milk.

And in this collection of amazing miracles, there was a place for garlic: “On the sea on Kiana, on the island on Buyan there is a baked bull: crush the garlic in the back, cut it on one side, and dip it on the other and eat it!” The ox is a sacred animal, garlic is a sacred plant, together they symbolize both the world sacrifice and the world food.

The important role of garlic is as a talisman. From time immemorial, in many lands, garlic was considered one of the most effective ways to combat all kinds of evil spirits. This function of his was at first protective in general, but then acquired a specialization, according to which it is opposed exclusively to mystical forces.

IN Ancient Greece garlic was considered an important component of the cult of the goddess Hecate. On the new moon, the ancient Greeks held “garlic” feasts in honor of Hecate, the queen of the underworld, the darkness of night visions and sorcery. She was also the goddess of witches, poisonous plants and many other witchcraft attributes. Sacrifices were left for her at crossroads. And the ancient Greek naturalist Theophrastus mentions the connection of garlic with crossroads in his treatise “Characters”, speaking about a person prone to superstitions: “If he notices a person from those who stand at the crossroads, crowned with a wreath of garlic, then he returns home and, having washed his feet to the head, then orders to call the priestesses to receive cleansing ... "

Garlic, which was placed in ancient Greek tombs, was intended to ward off evil forces. Homer also says that garlic was considered an effective means of fighting evil. In any case, in the magical plant with which Odysseus fights the evil sorceress Circe, many researchers see garlic. The god Hermes gave this remedy to him, trying to protect him from evil spells:

Having said this, Hermes gave me a healing remedy,

He pulled it out of the ground and explained its nature to me;

Its root was black, but its flowers were milky.

“Moli” is the name of the gods. It's not easy to find this remedy.

To mortal men. For the gods, nothing is impossible for them.

It is also known that those who ate garlic were not allowed into Greek temples; Athenaeus mentions this: “And Stilpo slept without hesitation in the temple of the Mother of the gods, gorging himself on garlic, although after such food it was forbidden to even enter the threshold there. The goddess appeared to him in a dream and said: “How is it that you, Stilpo, philosopher, break the law?” And he answered her in a dream: “Give me something else, and I won’t eat garlic.” Perhaps the reason for the ban on garlic in ancient temples is that it was considered a means of repelling any magical and mystical forces, not just evil ones.

In the Slavic tradition we see a close connection between garlic and the snake, one of the oldest primitive images; Garlic was popularly called “snake grass.” Among the Slavs, garlic appears in different guises, as a wedding symbol, as a way to gain magical power, as a means of mastering mystical knowledge and understanding the language of animals. At the same time, garlic was an inseparable part of the Christmas meal, as it ensured the safety of the holiday. And, of course, according to popular beliefs, garlic was the best way to ward off all mystical evil from yourself and your home.

Here is a quote from A. N. Afanasyev, the most complete on this matter:

“The memory of the mythical snake grass is mainly associated with garlic and onions... According to the Czechs, wild garlic on the roof of a house protects the building from lightning strikes. In Serbia there is a belief: if before the Annunciation you kill a snake, plant and grow a bulb of garlic in its head, then tie this garlic to a hat and put the hat on your head, then all the witches will come running and begin to take it away - of course, because it contains great power; in the same way, unclean spirits try to take away the mysterious color of fern from a person... Garlic is credited with the power to drive away witches, unclean spirits and illnesses. For all Slavs, it is a necessary accessory for dinner on the eve of Christmas; in Galicia and Little Russia this evening they place a head of garlic in front of each utensil, or instead put three heads of garlic and twelve onions in the hay with which the table is covered; This is done to protect against diseases and evil spirits. To protect themselves from witches, Serbs rub garlic juice on their soles, chests and underarms; Czechs hang it over their doors for the same purpose and to drive away diseases; by frequently repeating the word “garlic” you can get rid of the attacks of the devil; in Germany they think that miniatures do not tolerate onions and fly away when they smell them. In some villages in Southern Russia, when a bride goes to church, a head of garlic is tied into her braid to ward off spoilage. According to a Serbian proverb, garlic protects against all evil; and in Rus' they say: “onions cure seven ailments,” and during a pestilence, peasants consider it necessary to carry onions and garlic with them and to eat them as often as possible.”

Garlic was also believed to give people greater physical strength. Thus, Herodotus writes that the builders of the Egyptian pyramids received onions and garlic in large quantities so that the work progresses. He read an inscription about this during his travels on the wall of the Cheops pyramid. It is also known that athletes who participated in the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece ate garlic before competitions as a kind of “doping.”

Onions and garlic were an important component of the warriors' diet, a source of their strength. The ancient Greek comedian of the 5th century, Aristophanes, in his comedy “The Horsemen,” describing the preparations of the soldiers for the road, says first of all that they “took onions and garlic.”

In Slavic culture, this function of garlic also received a figurative meaning: you didn’t have to eat it, it was enough to have it with you to increase your strength. Thus, a person going to court or the battlefield was advised to put “three cloves of garlic” in his boot. Victory was guaranteed.

And of course, since ancient times the medicinal properties of garlic have been known and highly valued. In one of the oldest medical treatises that has survived to this day, the so-called Ebers papyrus (named after the German Egyptologist who found it and dating back to approximately the 16th century BC), garlic and onions are mentioned many times in the treatment of various diseases. However, this most interesting source surprises both with the variety and number of healing recipes, and with their strangeness. The ingredients include mouse tails, donkey hooves, and man's milk. All this is often combined with garlic and onions, which are components of many potions. Here is a recipe for a medicine that helps with general weakness: “Cook rotten meat, field herbs and garlic in goose fat, take for four days.” The universal remedy, called “the excellent medicine against death,” consisted of onions and beer foam, all of which should be shaken and taken orally. A “shower made of garlic and cow horn,” apparently crushed, was recommended against female infections. To regulate the menstrual cycle, it was advised to consume garlic mixed with wine. The following recipe was supposed to facilitate artificial abortion: “mix figs, onions, acanthus with honey, put on a cloth” and apply to the desired place. Acanthus is a common Mediterranean plant that went down in history thanks to the capitals of the Corinthian order.

The ancient Greeks described in detail the effect of garlic on the human body. The father of medicine, Hippocrates, believed that “garlic is hot and weak; it is diuretic, good for the body, but bad for the eyes, because, while significantly cleansing the body, it weakens vision; it relaxes and drives urine due to its laxative properties. Boiled, it is weaker than raw; it causes winds due to air retention.”

And the natural scientist Theophrastus, who lived a little later, paid a lot of attention to how garlic should be grown and what varieties of onions existed. He wrote about the “sweetness, pleasant smell and pungency” of garlic. He also mentions one of the varieties, which “is not boiled, but put in a vinaigrette, and when rubbed, it forms an amazing amount of foam.” This is confirmed by the fact that in ancient Greece, garlic was usually eaten boiled rather than raw. The ancient Greek “vinaigrette,” according to other sources, consisted of cheese, eggs, garlic and leeks, seasoned with olive oil and vinegar.

The subsequent history of garlic and onions in medicine can be called a triumphal procession. Their properties were described in detail, they became the main components of many indispensable medicinal products. Garlic has been credited with a variety of properties - from a universal antiseptic to an aphrodisiac. In certain periods of history, garlic was considered a panacea for all diseases. In the Middle Ages, there was a widespread story about how garlic saved the city, according to one version - from the plague, according to another - from cholera, in any case, this exalted it in the eyes of people.

And of course, garlic was considered the most the best medicine from snake bites; Thus, the long-standing connection attributed to garlic with snakes, dragons and other mystical creatures passed into new forms.

Finally, garlic has been an important part of the diet for many millennia, the most common and widespread seasoning among many peoples, although in certain periods it was considered the food of the poor.

Garlic was widespread in Mesopotamia. And not only among ordinary people. On a stone stele in the city of Kalakh, Ashurnasirpal II ordered to carve a detailed inventory of the magnificent royal feast he arranged, where onions and garlic occupied a significant place among the feast products. In Ancient Egypt, garlic not only served as the basis for healing potions, but was also widely used in the kitchen, which is confirmed by the Old Testament. The people of Israel, who fled from Egypt, found themselves in the desert, and were saved from hunger by the Lord, who sent them manna. However, soon people began to grumble, remembering with tears how in Egypt they ate “... both onions and onion and garlic; and now our soul languishes; there is nothing but manna in our sight” (Num. 11:5-6).

Ancient Greek poet of the 4th century BC. e. lists everyday food ordinary people:

Now you know what they are -

Bread, garlic, cheeses, flatbreads -

Food free; this is not lamb

With seasonings, not salted fish,

Not whipped cake, to ruin

Invented by people.

The Italian traveler Marco Polo, who visited China at the end of the 13th century, described strange things Chinese cuisine southwest of the country: “The poor go to the slaughterhouse, and as soon as they pull the liver out of the killed cattle, they take it, chop it into pieces, keep it in a garlic solution, and eat it that way. The rich also eat meat raw: they will order it to be chopped finely, soaked in a garlic solution with good spices, and they eat it just like we do, boiled.”

In England in the Middle Ages, garlic was looked down upon as a product of the mob. J. Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales depicts an absurd and extremely unsightly figure of a bailiff, who, we quote from the original, “was very fond of garlic, onions and leeks, and his drink was strong wine, red as blood.”

In Shakespeare we find a rich garlic “collection”, and all in the context of a conversation about the mob. The ridiculous actors from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” agree before the performance: “Dear actors, do not eat onions or garlic, because we must breathe sweet breath...” They say about the Duke in “Measure for Measure” that “he did not disdain lick the last beggar woman, stinking of garlic and black bread.” IN " Winter's Tale"At peasant dances, girls flirt with young men:

From the book Russians [stereotypes of behavior, traditions, mentality] author Sergeeva Alla Vasilievna

§ 8. “Soup soup and porridge are our food” Sometimes the kitchen says more about the people than the words of the national anthem. The shortest way to understanding another culture (as well as to a man’s heart) is through the stomach. We can say with confidence that real Russian cuisine is unknown in the West.

From the book Home Life and Morals of the Great Russian People in the 16th and 17th Centuries (essay) author Kostomarov Nikolay Ivanovich

From the book The Age of Ramesses [Life, religion, culture] author Monte Pierre From the book Everyday life mountaineers of the North Caucasus in the 19th century author Kaziev Shapi Magomedovich

From the book Hand in Hand with the Teacher author Collection of master classes

V.G. Nioradze “All people are good... All people are bad...” or “The one who affirms is rich. The one who denies is poor” Author - Valeria Givievna Nioradze, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor, Academician of the Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences, Knight of the Humane

From the book Requests of the Flesh. Food and sex in people's lives author Reznikov Kirill Yurievich

From Lezgina's book. History, culture, traditions author

From the book Avars. History, culture, traditions author Gadzhieva Madlena Narimanovna

From the book Religious Practices in Modern Russia author Team of authors

From the book Silent Killers. World history of poisons and poisoners by McInnis Peter

From the book The Mysteries of Cooking. Gastronomic splendor of the Ancient World author Sawyer Alexis Benoit

From the book The Kitchen of Primitive Man [How food made man intelligent] author Pavlovskaya Anna Valentinovna

8. What did people eat in ancient times? Meat It is extremely difficult to reconstruct what and how ancient people cooked and ate, but it is possible. Archaeological evidence has been preserved, as well as anthropological and biological data; modern analysis methods make it possible to restore the power system according to

The Slavs developed writing quite late, and therefore there is practically no evidence that they ate in Ancient Rus'. However, thanks to the discovery of a number of archaeological sources, it became known that Russian cuisine was distinguished by the consistency of ingredients in dishes and taste. They note that there were always grain porridges, rye and oat bread on the table.

What did they eat in Rus' in ancient times?

Meat and flour products were the main components of the diet of the princes during the period Kievan Rus. In the southern part they preferred bread made from wheat, but in the northern part rye was popular. In times of famine, dry leaves, various herbs and crow's feet were added to the flour. On holidays, monasteries presented rich bread, which was baked with poppy seeds and honey. They also had a passion for meat dishes, preferring pork, beef, lamb, chickens, pigeons, ducks and geese. During the campaigns, soldiers ate horse meat or the meat of wild animals, among which are hares, deer, wild boars, sometimes bears, hazel grouse, and partridges.

After the adoption of Christianity, the church began to adhere to the ancient canons, which prohibited the consumption of meat from wild animals, namely hares and bears, since they were believed to be “unclean.” According to Old Testament, meat with blood was prohibited, as well as the consumption of birds that were killed in snares. However, the foundations that had been built over the years were not easy to overcome. During times Moscow Rus' There was a gradual transition to compliance with church regulations.

What did they eat in Rus' before the advent of potatoes? The church viewed fish consumption favorably. Friday and Wednesday were considered fast days, and also three periods were allocated for spiritual purification and Lent. Naturally, fish was also consumed before the Baptism of Vladimir, like caviar, too, despite the fact that the first information about it appeared only in the twelfth century. The entire list of edible supplies was supplemented by dairy products, eggs and vegetables. In addition to animal oil, the diet included vegetable oil, which was extracted from flax and hemp seeds. Olive oil supplied from abroad.

Very little information has been preserved about what the cuisine was like during that period. Meat was often boiled or roasted on a spit, and vegetables were eaten raw or boiled. Some sources indicate that stewed meat was also present in the diet. Pies became the most original and delicious invention of distant ancestors, the tradition of making which has survived unchanged to our times. The most common dishes that people ate in Rus' in ancient times before the advent of potatoes were oatmeal and millet porridge. In the household of the princes, the main cook (elder cook) controlled the staff of kitchen workers, so they were all trained. Considering that some of them had foreign roots, such as Hungarian or Turkish, it is not surprising that Russian cuisine recipes contained foreign elements.

What did they drink in Ancient Rus'?

Even in those days, the Russian people did not refuse to drink. Also in " Tales of Bygone Years“The main reason why Vladimir abandoned Islam was sobriety. For a modern person, Russian booze is immediately associated with vodka, but during the times of Kievan Rus they did not make alcohol. Among the drinks of our ancestors we can distinguish kvass, a non-alcoholic or slightly intoxicating drink that was made from rye bread. Its prototype was beer.

Honey was very famous during the times of Kievan Rus, so both ordinary people and monks were involved in its production. From the chronicles it became known not only what people ate on the lands of Rus' in ancient times, but also what they washed it down with. Prince Vladimir asked to make three hundred cauldrons of honey on the eve of the opening of the church in Vasilevo. And in 1146, Izyaslav II found 500 barrels of honey and about 80 barrels of wine in the cellars of his enemy Svyatoslav. There were such varieties of honey: dry, sweet and with pepper. The ancestors did not disdain wine, which was imported from Greece, and monasteries and princes imported it for the liturgy.

Table setting was carried out according to certain rules. Princes used silver and gold dishes when they waged wars or invited foreign guests. Gold and silver spoons were in use, as can be found in the Tale of Bygone Years. No forks were used. Everyone cut meat or bread with their own knife. Bowls were usually used for drinks. Ordinary people used wooden and tin dishes and cups, and wooden spoons.

Gastronomic preferences originate Since those times, little has changed, and we can say with confidence that what was eaten in ancient Rus' is still on the table in every family today.

Food of the ancient Slavs: video

The proposed article and video material, without any doubt, will be received with interest by our colleagues. Extremely interesting facts are revealed to us in the process of becoming acquainted with the dietary habits of the ancient Slavs. Without in any way denying the usefulness of vegetarianism and Ayurvedic cuisine, however, we are forced to admit that the food of our ancestors was much more varied. In places where, due to natural conditions, it was difficult to grow grain or keep domestic animals, the Slavs were forced to eat what a successful hunt or fishing would send them. And yet bread, milk, kvass and porridge are our strength. It's hard to disagree.

(youtube)195ExmzrJB8(/youtube)

FOOD OF THE EASTERN SLAVS

The traditional food of the East Slavic peoples has not been studied enough. The economic activities of the population were studied much more intensively. Methods of processing products and preparing various dishes from them, that is, folk cooking techniques, attracted attention to a much lesser extent. Meanwhile, it is in various details of folk cuisine, in everyday diet and nutrition, in festive and ritual food that the characteristic features of the traditional way of life of an ethnic group are manifested with particular brightness.

In the 19th - early 20th centuries, information about the food of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians was published mainly in local publications. They characterized the nutrition of the population in one district, province or in individual localities and were written by doctors, economists, statisticians, military personnel, etc. This determined a different approach to the phenomena under consideration. Thus, medical articles aimed to find out the causes of common diseases and, in connection with this, paid attention mainly to nutritional deficiencies. The composition and quality of the products were taken into account in the statistical and topographical descriptions. Finally, some works colorfully depicted the richness and diversity of the population's culinary skills.

In general, we can say that in those days collecting work was carried out, and there was no unity in understanding the subject of research and methodology. Therefore, such publications are fragmentary. Typically, researchers have noted the predominance of plant products, largely attributing it to the restrictions imposed by the Christian religion, which established fast days when it was forbidden to eat meat and drink milk. There were more than two hundred such days a year, which in itself established certain proportions in the diet. Reporting an approximate menu for residents of a particular area, many authors listed the most popular dishes that are eaten during fasting and during meat-eaters. Basically, the nutritional conditions of the peasantry were displayed, which in most works was considered as a single whole, without taking into account its social stratification.

Bread, dough products, cereals, stews

The leading branch of the economy of the Eastern Slavs was grain farming, so flour and cereal products formed the basis of nutrition. Bread was especially important. Due to its high calorie content, good taste qualities it was and is an invariable component of nutrition for all segments of the population. The expression: “Bread and salt” served as one of the forms of greeting, meaning a wish for well-being. They greeted especially honored guests and young spouses on their wedding day with bread and salt; they went with bread to visit the woman in labor. Guests were treated to bread products and brought as gifts to the owners when they went to visit. When setting off on a long journey, the first thing they stocked up on was bread. None of the other types of food can compare with it in terms of variety of both preparation methods and finished products.

Bread differs in the types of flour, its quality, methods of making the dough and its recipe, the nature of the baking, and shape. Rye bread “black” has played a major role in Russia since ancient times. Its predominant consumption in the northern and middle zone of settlement of the Eastern Slavs (non-chernozem lands) was explained by the zonal features of agriculture: the predominance of rye crops over wheat crops. The expansion of wheat crops observed during the 19th century in the southern part of the black soil steppes contributed to the fact that by the beginning of the 20th century, wheat - “white” - bread became the main bread in the south and southeast. In some places (Altai, Minusinsk regions) they stopped eating rye bread altogether, and in some areas they baked rye-wheat - “gray” - bread.

However, the rural population did not have enough reserves of rye and wheat, so flour from other grain crops was also used. They baked the so-called chaff (in Belarus) - bread from wholemeal rye flour, to which half of the bread was added barley, buckwheat or oatmeal. Depending on the type of flour used, the bread was called grechanik (with buckwheat flour), yachnik (with barley flour), prosyanik (with millet flour). In the Carpathians and the Urals, where there were poor grain harvests, oatmeal was also used.

In lean years or in the spring, when supplies were running low, various impurities from dried and crushed plants were added to the flour. So, in Belarus and in the Carpathians, when there was a shortage of crops, bread with the addition of grated potatoes was very common (Belarusians call it bulbyan bread, Hutsuls - riplyanyk, Lemkos - banduryannik). In general, a lot of such impurities were known at that time: among cultivated plants, these were most often potatoes, then carrots, beets, bran; from wild ones - crushed pine and oak bark, acorns, wild buckwheat, quinoa, fern, etc.

Depending on the quality of the flour, a distinction was made between sieve bread - made from flour sifted through a sieve (with a fine mesh), sieve bread - from flour sifted through a sieve (with a fine mesh), and fur (or chaff) bread - from wholemeal flour.

The Eastern Slavs, like other Slavic peoples, baked bread from sour dough. The most ancient techniques of baking bread from unleavened dough in the form of shortcakes were preserved in folk memory, but were usually used occasionally. As a basic and everyday unleavened bread, unleavened bread was widespread only in the Carpathians: the Boykos baked it from oatmeal flour (oshchipok), the Lemkos and Hutsuls baked it from corn flour (the Lemkos called it adzimok, oschinok, the Hutsuls called it mala, korzh). They baked it immediately before eating, kneading the dough in a wooden trough, often without salt.

Preparing sour bread required longer processing of the products. The flour taken for baking was carefully sifted into a special wooden trough (selnitsa, nochva, nochva, netski). Then they kneaded the dough in wooden (dugout or cooper's) kneaders, and in Ukraine in some places also in clay kvass (Northern Russian kvashnya, South Russian dezha, Ukrainian dizha, white dzyazha) and at the same time fermented it. Yeast, special mixtures with hops, kvass or beer grounds, and most often the remains of dough from previous baking were used as leaven. In southern Russian villages they also prepared scalded bread, for which the flour was brewed with boiling water before fermentation. The well-kneaded dough was placed in a warm place where it would rise. So that the bread is lush, thrifty housewives“knocked them out” and allowed them to come up a second time.

The finished dough was cut into round loaves (in the form of tall, thick flat cakes) and baked in a hut oven on a cleanly swept hearth (hearth bread). Bread was sometimes placed on cabbage leaves, and in some areas in the 20th century they used tin round cylindrical or oblong rectangular shapes (tin bread).

Usually bread was baked once a week, but in areas with stable high yields (southern Western Siberia), daily baking became customary.

In cities at the end of the 19th century, bread was usually bought ready-made. It was baked in bakeries and sold in bakeries. In bakeries, they made a wide variety of products from rich (with the addition of butter and eggs) wheat dough, which varied both in dough recipe and shape. These were various round and oblong rolls and rolls, pretzels (figure eight), rolls (round or shaped), etc. Bagels, bagels and sushki (dried and small sizes) were made from wheat dough, rolled into a ring, boiled in water and then baked. All these products were very popular. They were sold in bakeries and shops, peddled at bazaars and fairs, in taverns and teahouses. They widely entered the life of the urban commoner and, together with tea, constituted a daily breakfast for many. These products were brought to the village as gifts.

In rural areas, small cookies were baked in a frying pan from sour dough left when cutting bread (Belarusians called them skavarodniki, Ukrainians called pampushki) in the form of flat cakes or rings, which were usually served for breakfast (in the north and in Siberia they were called soft, soft breakfast).

From pieces of bread, various grain remains, crusts and crackers, they prepared tyurya, or murtsovka, which on fasting days constituted the main food of the poorest segments of the population of the city and village (with the exception of Transcarpathia, where it was almost unknown). Tyurya was pieces of bread crumbled into salted water, kvass, spring birch sap, whey, milk, and in Belarus they used potato decoction for this (the dish was called kapluk). As food for children, prison also entered the life of the wealthy: pieces of white bread or buns were soaked in milk or cream with sugar and served as sweets.

On holidays they baked pies (pie) from sour wheat or rye dough. In areas with unstable grain harvests (Belarus, the Carpathians, Russian non-black earth provinces), pies were also considered bread baked from higher quality flour; among northern Russians and Belarusians - wheat, among southern Russians and in the Carpathians - even rye, but from sifted flour . For Russians in other areas and Ukrainians, pies with fillings are more typical, for which vegetables, berries, mushrooms, fish, eggs, meat, cottage cheese, porridge, etc. were widely used. It is interesting to note that the areas of the most common types of pie fillings have developed. Thus, the Russians of the northern provinces and Siberia loved pies with wild berries (blueberries, cloudberries, bird cherry) and especially with fish; in the southern zone of Russia and Ukraine - with garden berries. Very popular were small flat cakes, on which a filling of cottage cheese (cheesecakes) or another type of dough was placed (shanegs, common in the European North, the Urals and Siberia), as well as without any filling at all, smeared with sour cream on top (pampushki of Ukrainians and Belarusians ), sprinkled with salt, caraway seeds, poppy seeds, crushed hemp seeds (lacunas, sochni Belarusians), with mushrooms, with porridge. Pies baked from sour dough in the Carpathians were called baked pies and were rarely prepared. More common there were pies made from unleavened dough - knishes, filled with boiled potatoes, sauerkraut, sometimes cottage cheese and usually had a triangular shape.

Ritual cookies were baked from sour dough, specially intended for annual and family holidays. Each of them was designed in a certain way. So, on Holy Week, for Maundy Thursday, cookies were prepared in the form of animal figurines (Russian roe, cow), which were given to livestock; for March 9 (“forty martyrs”), larks were baked from dough to commemorate the arrival of birds; for the Ascension, ladders (oblong a pie with cross bars), for Epiphany - crosses, for Easter Easter cakes (tall, fluffy rich breads in cylindrical shapes). These cookies reflected ancient religious and magical ideas in materialized form, for example: the ladder symbolized the ascension and were baked both on the corresponding holiday and on days of remembrance of the dead.

Large ritual pies for weddings were baked from the best types of flour. In the Russian North, in the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia, such pies were called kurniks; they were filled with chicken, lamb, and beef. In the southern Russian provinces (on the Don, Kuban), as well as in Ukraine and Belarus, they baked high fluffy bread- loaf. It was decorated with cones baked from dough, animal figures, as well as flowers or tree branches.

An ancient ritual dish was pancakes (Russian pancake, white pancake, Ukrainian pancake). They were baked from sour dough of any type of flour (buckwheat, millet, oatmeal, barley, sometimes pea), and in the 20th century mainly from wheat; They ate it with butter and lard, with sour cream and liquid cottage cheese, sometimes with honey, with salted fish and sturgeon caviar. For Russians and Belarusians, pancakes have been a mandatory dish during funeral rites since ancient times. Until now, Russians eat them in large quantities and with a variety of seasonings in the spring, on the holidays of farewell to winter. Ukrainians (mlintsi) consumed pancakes made from sour dough much less often. They were baked in the central Ukrainian provinces, usually from buckwheat flour (grechaniky). More often they prepared pancakes from unleavened dough, known to all East Slavic peoples (Russian blintsy, Ukrainian and white nalisniki).

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, in the cities of central Russia, gingerbread cookies, known since the 17th century, were sometimes used as ritual cookies, which were distributed throughout Russia as holiday treat. They were baked from round dough with plenty of spices, on molasses with honey or pure honey, sprinkled with raisins on top, and decorated with embossed patterns (gingerbread patterns were cut out on pear or linden boards). Gingerbread was given as a gift to relatives and distributed to the poor on the day of remembrance of the dead. They have long been a favorite gift at all wedding and pre-wedding parties, and in cities they replaced chicken and loaf.

Many different dishes were prepared from unleavened dough. Flatbreads are known to all agricultural peoples. Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians baked them from any type of flour, usually as a substitute for bread when there was a shortage of it. In some areas of Belarus, flat cakes (lapuns), spread with cottage cheese, crushed poppy seeds or hemp, were sent to relatives during family holidays.

Dishes made from dough cooked in boiling water, milk, and broth are very common not only among the Eastern Slavs, but also among many peoples of Western Europe, as well as the peoples of the East. Of these, the most famous is noodle soup (Russian noodles, Ukrainian lokshina, white noodles). Steep noodle dough was kneaded with eggs, rolled out thinly, cut into small narrow strips, dried and then boiled in broth or milk. Other soups had less complex cooking, prepared with boiled dough, scooped out with a spoon (Ukrainian dumplings, Russian dumplings) or torn off (rvantsy). Boiled pieces of dough were eaten without broth, pouring them with sour cream (Ukrainian dumplings) or “milk” made from poppy seeds and hemp (bel. kama).

Dishes made from unleavened dough in the form of small filled pies boiled in water: dumplings and dumplings were very popular.

Dumplings were a favorite national food Ukrainians, they were also prepared by Belarusians and Russians in the southern provinces. The dough for dumplings was rolled out thinly, cut into circles and stuffed with cottage cheese, shredded cabbage, and, in the summer, with berries, primarily cherries. After boiling, the dumplings were taken out and eaten with sour cream or butter. Ukrainians also made dumplings from yeast dough, filling them with plums or sire (cottage cheese).

Dumplings were a favorite dish among the Russians of the Urals and Siberia. The dough for them was rolled out not into a sheet, but into a thin sausage; they cut it up, kneading each small piece into a flat cake; stuffed with minced meat and folded into a half ring. Boiled dumplings were removed from the broth, if with hot seasoning: vinegar, pepper, mustard. There is an opinion that dumplings were adopted by Russians from the peoples of the Urals (the Komi-Permyak word “pelnyan” means “bread ear”). In Siberia, in winter, dumplings were prepared in large quantities, frozen, put in bags and used as needed.

Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians who lived in Central Asia adopted from the local peoples a dish similar to dumplings - manti. They were made larger, filled with minced meat with a lot of onions and steamed on special grates.

Dough products boiled in boiling fat were considered festive table dishes among the Eastern Slavs, as well as among many other peoples of Eurasia. Their forms were very diverse. Most often, the dough was cut into narrow strips (Russian brushwood, struzhni), in Ukraine round nuts (gorishki) were rolled up and served at weddings, in Siberia they used a variety of tin forms (they were dipped in dough and then in boiling fat). In cast iron molds with patterns, the dough was dried and waffles were made, which were considered a delicacy.

In Ukraine, dough in the form of balls was boiled in boiling honey (cones). Brewing in honey, as you know, is very common among the Caucasian peoples.

The everyday ones included simple to prepare, but extremely high-calorie dishes from custard or steamed flour. Russians and Ukrainians widely used salamata (Ukrainian salamakha), which was made from fried flour, brewed with boiling water and steamed in the oven. The finished salamata was poured with fat (animal or vegetable) on top. Kulaga (kvasha) was prepared from sweetish malt flour with the addition of viburnum berries in the north and Siberia, and fruits in the south. This sweet dish was served as a delicacy, usually during Lent. Ukrainians prepared sauerkraut from a mixture of millet, buckwheat and rye flour; Flatbreads were made from heavily boiled buckwheat flour, which were eaten with fresh milk. Ukrainians and Belarusians prepared grout in the form of flour crumbs brewed with boiling water (Russian grout, Ukrainian grout, white grout). Liquid dishes made from boiled flour (bautukha, kalatukha, tsirka) were especially common among Belarusians. They are still cooked today, but with milk. Similar dishes are known in Poland (zacirca).

Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians prepared oatmeal from oatmeal (Belarusians also call it milta), which some researchers consider an ancient Slavic dish. For this purpose, oats were steamed, then dried and ground into flour. When eating, it was diluted with salted or sweetened water, kvass, milk, or added to liquid dishes. In the North and in the Urals, oatmeal was one of the ubiquitous dishes; Ukrainians prepared it less often than others. Oatmeal was very common in central Europe and Asia, but it is almost unknown to the southern Slavs.

Kissels were made from leavened flour (most often oatmeal, but also rye and pea). For this purpose, the flour was poured with boiling water, left for several days, changing the water (“fermented”), and then filtered and boiled. Russians and Belarusians ate these thick jelly with the addition of cow or vegetable oil, and Ukrainians also with honey and milk. Kissels were an ancient ritual dish; they were served at all family holidays (birthdays, weddings), as well as at funerals.

Cereal dishes, and especially porridge, were no less common than flour dishes. In the Russian North, in the Urals, in Siberia and in the Ukrainian Carpathians, mainly oat and barley cereals were consumed, in the south - millet, and on the border with Moldova - corn. Buckwheat, which was not very common in other countries, was very loved by the East Slavic peoples. Rice cereals were available to the rural population of the southern strip of Siberia and Central Asia, where they were purchased from the local indigenous population. In the European part of the country, only privileged sections of the urban population had the opportunity to buy rice. In the Amur region they used budu - Manchurian millet.

Porridge was cooked in water and milk and steamed in the oven. They have been ritual food since ancient times, they were fed to newlyweds at weddings, they were served at christenings, and they were prepared as boiled kutya (sometimes with honey or raisins).

Since ancient times, porridges have been eaten with liquid hot dishes (cabbage soup, borscht); in the south-west of Ukraine, liquid dishes were served with kulesha - corn porridge, which replaced bread. Widespread among Ukrainians and Russians in the southern regions, kulesh (Ukrainian kulish) was a liquid millet porridge cooked with lard (in the 20th century also with potatoes and onions). Russians in the northern provinces of Siberia and the Urals prepared thick, so-called “thick” cabbage soup, boiling barley with flour dressing. In the 20th century, potatoes began to be added. Ukrainian groups in the Carpathians made "rye borscht". To do this, flour was poured with water and fermented, and then boiled. Since that time, people began to eat this borscht with separately boiled potatoes. Belarusians also prepared a hot dish of cereals (krupnik).

Liquid hot dishes (Russian stews, Ukrainian yushki) were also cooked from vegetables. However, cereals or a dressing made from flour stirred in water were often added to them. Gradually, these dishes became more widespread. Legumes used for stews were peas, and in the south, beans and lentils.

In the middle and southern zone of the country, Russians have the most popular dish there was cabbage soup ("Shchi and porridge are our food"). To prepare them, sour or fresh cabbage was used, root vegetables were added to it and seasoned with flour dressing. Belarusians called a similar dish cabbage.

In Ukraine and in the southern Russian and Belarusian provinces, a favorite hot dish was borscht, which was prepared from beets, sometimes with the addition of other vegetables. It was cooked with beet kvass (the beets were filled with water and left for a day - fermented) or with bread kvass (raw cheese). Ukrainians put many different vegetables in borscht besides beets: cabbage, potatoes, onions, dill, parsley, beans, seasoned with flour or cereal grout, lard or vegetable oil. In Kuban, plums were also added to borscht.

In the spring, in many places, young beets and their tops were used to prepare botvinya (white: batsvinne) - a stew, to which various greens that had grown by this time were added.

On fast days, hot dishes were prepared on meat broth or seasoned with sour cream or whitened with milk. During the 6th post they cooked them with mushrooms and fish (in summer - fresh fish soup, in winter - stew with smelt - small dried fish, Ukrainians - with taranka - dried fish). Lenten hot dishes were seasoned with vegetable oil.

Vegetables

The consumption of vegetables varied depending on the possibilities of their cultivation: the food of the inhabitants of the northern provinces was poor in them; The further south you went, the more different vegetables were used. In the northernmost zone of vegetable growing, only onions, garlic and horseradish were grown. Simple dishes were prepared from onions: they ate them green and onions, cut them, pounded them with salt and ate them with bread, sometimes washed down with kvass. In poor families this was a common breakfast. Onions and garlic were added in abundance when boiling and stewing vegetable and meat dishes as seasonings. The East Slavic peoples generally greatly valued hot and spicy seasonings, but used them in relatively small quantities, more so in the southern provinces. Horseradish, vinegar (in the north), mustard (in the south), and sometimes also pepper were served at the table in wealthy houses. Imported spicy seasonings (saffron, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg) and almonds were more familiar to the townspeople, and the wealthy added them to holiday dishes, and the rest - on special days, such as Easter.

In the non-chernozem zone, radishes, rutabaga, turnips, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and cucumbers grew.

Since ancient times, vegetables (except for potatoes, which spread late) have been used to prepare parenki: vegetables were heated in an oven in a sealed container until soft.

The radish kept well throughout the winter. It was finely cut (lomtikha) or grated (trikha) and eaten with vegetable oil, sour cream, and kvass.

They ate boiled rutabaga, finely chopped and seasoned with milk. Belarusians cooked stew from rutabaga and carrots.

Until the 19th century, turnips occupied a leading place among vegetable crops. It was eaten raw, steamed in the oven, and dried for future use. In the northern provinces, turnips at times acted as a bread substitute. Its value fell due to the spread of potatoes. In the second half of the 19th century, it was already known everywhere and won general recognition.

Potatoes were boiled, fried, baked, eaten whole, chopped, mashed, with the addition of meat, butter, dairy products, and seasoned with sour and salty vegetables. However, eating it was not the same everywhere: the Old Believers treated it with prejudice as an innovation, calling it a “damn apple”; The Russian old-timers of Siberia also ate little of it. But among the Belarusians it acquired the greatest importance; they prepared a large number of dishes from it, baked flat cakes, pancakes (dzerun), added it to bread, cooked soup, made potato porridge (kamy, potato porridge). This brings Belarusians closer to their western neighbors: Poles, Germans, Czechs, Slovaks.

For all levels of society, potatoes became a necessary product, but its importance was especially great among low-income workers and peasants, where in years of grain shortages it became almost the only food. The resulting monotony in diet had a negative impact on the health of poor families, and especially children.

Cabbage was no less important in nutrition. In autumn and early winter it was consumed fresh, the rest of the time - pickled (sour, salty). For pickling, cabbage was chopped in wooden troughs with special chops. Women from several families usually united for this work (gathered for kakustka) and prepared several barrels for each household. Sometimes small ones were placed among the chopped cabbage. whole heads of cabbage(they were considered a delicacy), apples and carrots were added, which improved the taste. Sauerkraut, chopped or shredded (very finely chopped), was on the table every day in winter. It was seasoned with vegetable oil or kvass and eaten with bread. Also, cucumbers were eaten fresh in summer and autumn, and pickled in barrels for the winter. In the fall, lightly salted, delicate-tasting lightly salted cucumbers were served as a delicacy.

Red or table beets were grown everywhere in Russia, and white sugar beets were also grown in the black soil zone of the European part. Red beets were eaten boiled (especially in the south), borscht and botvinya were prepared with it. Both types were used to make kvass: they were fermented, and sugar was also simmered in the oven.

Pumpkin (Ukrainian, White watermelon) was of great importance in nutrition, especially in the black earth zone. Pumpkin was fried, baked, and porridge was made with it. The seeds were dried and “hulled” in their free time, from which they obtained edible oil or pounded and ate with bread, pancakes, flatbreads. In the southern part of this zone, tomatoes (tomatoes), zucchini, eggplants, parsnips, and peppers are widespread.

Vegetables were consumed as a side dish for other dishes and as an independent dish. They were stewed by cutting them, each type separately or in a mixture. In the summer, okroshka was prepared with vegetables using kvass (mainly from potatoes, onions, cucumbers) with the addition of eggs, fish, and meat. Vegetable soups were common among Belarusians (hernia from rutabaga, garbuzianka from pumpkin, carrot from carrots, etc.).

Fruits, wild fruits and plants

In Ukraine, the Volga region, Central Asia, and the Amur region, melons grew - melons and watermelons. They were eaten fresh, watermelons were also salted, and melons were dried.

In the European part of the country, almost everywhere, with the exception of the cold regions of the North, gardens were planted and apple trees, pears, cherries, plums, cherries and various berry bushes were grown. In some places they also planted rowan and bird cherry. The most common were apple and cherry trees. Particularly popular were some ancient folk varieties (Vladimirskaya cherry, Nezhinskaya rowan), as well as those bred by Tambov breeders in the 19th century (apple trees Antonovskaya, Semirenko, etc.).

The fruits were eaten fresh, jam and jelly were made from them, and compotes were prepared from various fresh and dry fruits. We prepared marshmallows for future use from dried fruit and berry purees and candied fruits from boiled sugar syrup fruit. Pears were fermented in barrels for the winter, apples were soaked and filled with sweet must.

Wild fruits (apples and pears for drying and pickling) and berries were collected everywhere: currants, cranberries, raspberries, blueberries, lingonberries, in the North - cloudberries (ate fresh and stored for the winter), in Siberia - bird cherry (dried and ground into flour, which was baked into pies or, brewed with boiling water, eaten with pancakes and pancakes).

Wild plants have been known to people since ancient times; among many nations they are still held in high esteem. In Russian national cuisine wild green products also occupied a worthy place. The folk calendar even designated a special day for “Moor green cabbage soup” - May 16, when cabbage soup, borscht, botvinya, and gruel prepared from the leaves of young nettles, lungwort, and quinoa appeared in abundance on the table. The collected leaves were boiled in water, rubbed through a sieve and poured with kvass.

In lean years, quinoa was threshed, ground and, mixed with rye flour, baked into bread. They also collected brood buds of the spring clear, which were sometimes carried away by wind and rain and accumulated in large quantities at the bends in the lowlands. The peasants called these buds “heavenly wheat”, “millet” and used them for food. Chistya tubers, washed from the ground by rain, were also used for food; they taste a little like potatoes.

The fragrant stalks of caraway seeds, which in peasant usage were called “meadow apples,” were also eaten in the spring.

When there was a shortage of crops in the past, they ate the giant grass angelica, and in the North angelica replaced vegetables the whole summer.

For a long time, horsetail was held in high esteem on the peasant spring table; in the Smolensk and Kaluga provinces it was called piedstrukh. In early spring it was a delicacy for village children, and then no less a delicacy were the young strong green fruits of the willow, called “cones” by the peasants; after that, sorrel and sorrel ("hare cabbage"), wild strawberries, raspberries, wild currants and other gifts of wild nature, used by the people to this day, ripened. Once upon a time, pies with nightshade (“late nightshade”) were a considerable delicacy for peasant children. Ripe late fruit was even sold on market days, although it could not compete with raspberries, black currants, and blackberries.

In Siberia and the European North, a great help in food and delicacy was wild berry- blueberries, strawberries ("glubenina" - in Altai), raspberries, black and red currants, bayarka. viburnum, bird cherry, blueberry ("shiksha") - gonobobel and marsh - cloudberry, cranberry, lingonberry. In Altai, the berries were boiled with honey and eaten on fasting days as a special dish, and also used as a filling in pies and shangi. Kissel was prepared from viburnum. Boyarka, raspberries, bird cherry and viburnum were dried, scattered on the stove or in the oven on baking sheets, on cabbage leaves, and often on drying racks in the yard, on which grain is dried in the summer. In winter, dried raspberries were used for colds, and viburnum and boyarka were steamed in pots in the oven and eaten with bread. Dry bird cherry berries were ground into flour, diluted with water, placed in the oven overnight so that it “malted,” and eaten with bread.

In Siberia, in the forest area, picked berries Lingonberries and cranberries were often stored in the forest (fresh) in large birch bark containers lowered into dug closed pits. Some peasants had up to 80 such pits, and berries were taken from them in the winter as needed.

In many places they collected and stored nuts for the winter (in the forest belt - hazel, in the Siberian taiga - pine nuts), which were a favorite treat at all evenings and gatherings. They started harvesting pine nuts from the end of August and often went skiing for them in winter. They were not only a delicacy (“Siberian talk”); oil was squeezed out of the peeled nuts, and the cake was used to whiten tea and, as butter, it was eaten with bread.

Chewing larch resin (serki) was widespread in Siberia. Its preparation was usually done by old people who were good at finding trees suitable for this.

Fireweed (the popular name for Ivan-tea) has long been known as “Koporie tea” - from the village of Koporye, from where for many years hundreds of pounds of tea were exported, prepared from young fireweed leaves steamed and dried in the free spirit of the Russian oven. When brewed, the color of fireweed tea is indistinguishable from natural varieties of tea. Fireweed rhizomes were dried and ground when crops were in short supply. The resulting flour was used to bake flat cakes or add it to bread, which made it sweeter. Hence the popular nicknames of this plant - “breadbox” and “miller”. Young May leaves of fireweed ("cockerel apples") were used for salad, and fireweed honey. as experts say, the sweetest.

Everywhere they drank an infusion of St. John's wort, and in the European North. Altai and Transbaikalia - oregano herbs, or "white scrolls", "shulpa" (rotten birch wood) and bergenia leaves. For tea, they used last year's brown, leathery bergenia leaves, which had already lost their bitterness. In addition, in Transbaikalia they drank brewed chaga as tea. In Altai, the population ate wild onions and sweet onions, as well as mountain garlic.

Wild garlic, wild garlic ("flask"), was widely consumed in fresh and salted form. Ramson, one of the first spring plants in Siberia, is widely used by people to this day. In the Far North of Siberia, the roots of the macaria plant - "snake root" - were eaten as an antiscorbutic remedy.

The use of sunflower to obtain oil testifies to the people's ingenuity. Until the second half of the 18th century, it was only an exotic golden flower, when Count Sheremetyev’s serf Danila Bokarev was the first to obtain oil from sunflower seeds. On his initiative, a makeshift butter churn was built in the Alekseev-ka settlement, Voronezh province. And in three years, Alekseevka turned into the center of the Russian oil industry.

Mushrooms have been a great help in food since ancient times. But according to established habits in different places their use varied. In the central provinces of the European part of Russia, mushroom picking was more widespread different types and consumption fresh. In Siberia, more milk mushrooms and saffron milk mushrooms were prepared for winter and spring consumption in salted form. In Ukraine, mushrooms were held in less esteem, but in Belarus and the European North they were widely consumed fresh, salted and dried. Porcini mushrooms are considered the best, followed by black ones: birch and boletus mushrooms, called “obabki” in Siberia, then red ones: aspen mushrooms, butter mushrooms, saffron milk caps, milk mushrooms and others. Apparently, the noted proverbs were born in the mushroom areas: “If there is mushrooms, so there is bread”; “They take every mushroom in their hands, but not every mushroom they put in the back.” In some places, mushroom picking had commercial significance - they were sold fresh and dried.

Beverages

In the forest belt, the sap of birch, maple, and pine was collected and consumed as a refreshing drink. Various drinks were obtained from plant products by fermentation. Particularly popular was the sour-tasting kvass, the methods of preparation of which were very diverse. Ukrainians and Russians from the southern provinces drank kvass from beets. In Ukraine and Belarus, kvass was made from apples and pears, which were soaked for a long time, and the infusion was fermented with yeast and hops. Bread kvass had the most pleasant sweetish taste. Ukrainians used it as a liquid for borscht, and among Russians and Belarusians it was a favorite everyday drink. Kvass was made from rye malt, bran or crackers, which were brewed with boiling water, steamed in an oven, fermented, allowed to brew and filtered. Bread kvass, which has a pleasant aroma and slight “playfulness”, quenched thirst well and satiated. During fasting, kvass with bread was the main food of the poor.

For the holidays, beer was brewed from oats, often from barley with the addition of sprouted malt grains. This intoxicating drink was widespread among the Western Slavs, Balts, and Scandinavians. For Russians, beer was a ritual drink in the old days. It was prepared communally and drunk on holidays and special days. Joint brewing of beer (by families, villages, church parishes) was especially common in the northern Russian provinces. They brewed in special log houses (breweries or breweries). in large artel boilers. In the 19th century church holidays organized "brotherhoods". which was the manifestation of the ancient custom of drinking together from a common larger bowl, usually hollowed out of wood, which was called bratina. Home beer production lasted the longest in the North and Siberia, while industrial beer production was established in the cities.

Another drink widespread not only among the Eastern Slavs, but also in many Western European countries, was honey. Bee honey was diluted with water, boiled, hops were added and infused (sometimes with plant leaves), causing fermentation to occur and alcohol to be formed. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, intoxicating meads had already become a rarity; in some places (in Siberia, Ukraine) cooking light beer - mead, and in the cities they sold a hot honey drink with sbiten spices.

Samosidka vodka was used as an intoxicating drink, which was made at home or distilled in factories from wheat, and in the 19th century also from potatoes. It appeared in Russia in the 16th century, and soon the sale of vodka became a state monopoly. By infusing vodka or alcohol (of higher strength) with herbs, they made tinctures ("St. John's wort", "Zubrovka", "ryabinovka", etc.), and with fruits and berries - liqueurs ("Vishnevka", "Slivyanka", "Grushovka", "robin", etc.). On the Don and Kuban, grapes were grown, from which various wines were prepared; but this did not become widespread due to unfavorable climatic conditions. Nobles, merchants and the townsfolk who imitated them in everyday life considered it necessary to serve foreign wines and liqueurs to the table on special occasions.

In the 19th century, tea was included as an everyday drink, imported from other countries, primarily China. Wealthy townspeople preferred Indian and especially flower tea (best variety, obtained from the buds of a tea bush), giving a pale yellow, very aromatic infusion. More accessible was long tea (black) and cheap, so-called branded, or brick (pressed in the form of tiles - bricks) tea of ​​the lower grade. When brewing, rural residents added dried flowers, leaves and small shoots of some plants that have been used since ancient times as aromatic or medicinal decoctions (mint, currant, raspberry, carrot leaves, linden flowers, roses, apple trees, etc.).

Tea was especially loved in Siberia, where it was served with almost every meal. Here, in the neighborhood of the Chinese and Mongols, among whom this drink has been known since ancient times, tea spread earlier than in the European part of the country. Among Russians, tea has become such a beloved and popular drink that it has given rise to new national ways its preparation is like none of the other borrowed dishes. So, water was boiled in samovars. They were developed on the basis of ancient vessels with a heating device in the form of a hollow pipe in the center, into which smoldering coals were placed. These devices were used to keep drinks (sbitennik) and dishes hot. In the samovar, the heat of hot coals brought the water to a boil and did not allow it to cool for a long time. The samovar in the house became a symbol of prestige and prosperity. They brewed tea in small earthenware or porcelain teapots, which were placed on a samovar to keep warm. In the cities in the 19th century, many public teahouses were opened, where huge samovars holding several buckets of water were constantly boiling. Carami were served on the table. The pair consisted of a small teapot with tea leaves placed on a small samovar or kettle with boiling water. In cities, water for tea was also boiled in large tin kettles. Among Ukrainians and Belarusians, teapots were more common than samovars. Rural residents often brewed tea in cast iron, in a Russian oven, where it was steamed.

Tea was usually drunk with bread products. Prosperous families served it with confectionery and cream (tea “in English”). Among the people, the addition of milk and cream to tea became widespread in areas where there were contacts with the Turkic and Mongolian peoples. Yes, in the Urals. In the Lower Volga region, in the Northern Caucasus and Southern Siberia they drank tea “Kalmyk”, “Mongolian”, “Tatar”, adding milk, flour, and butter to the boiling broth.

Coffee, cocoa and chocolate (imported, as well as tea) were familiar mainly to city dwellers. Cocoa and chocolate, cooked with milk, were a delicacy and were used mainly in the diet of the children of the townspeople. In rural areas, the difference in children's food was mainly that babies were given more dairy, as well as soft or crushed food and they were limited in the use of fat and spicy seasonings. Special food for little ones was prepared in wealthy and mostly urban families (various porridges with milk, especially semolina, omelettes, cutlets). All families tried to allocate more sweets, delicacies, and fruits to their children.

Vegetable oils

Since ancient times, some oilseed plants have been used to produce vegetable oils, which were also called “lenten”, since they could be consumed during fasting. Their distribution showed zonality, which was explained by natural conditions. In the northern and central provinces they mainly used linseed oil, south of Moscow - hemp. Along with it, from the middle of the 19th century, oil from sunflower seeds began to be squeezed out in the black earth zone. From here sunflower oil were taken to the central provinces. Petersburg, Moscow. It gained universal recognition and gradually replaced other varieties. Mustard, poppy, and pumpkin oils were extracted in small quantities in the black earth zone of the European part of the country, which were used as aromatic flavors and as a delicious seasoning for flour dishes. The olive oil produced in Transcaucasia was little known to the rural population; it was used only by wealthy city dwellers, mainly for salads.

Vegetable oil was cheaper than animal fats and therefore more accessible. It was used to season soups, flour dishes (jelly, zavarukhi, grout, salamata, etc.), porridges, poured onions and potatoes with it, dipped flatbreads in it, and cooked dough products in it.

The seeds of some oilseeds were pounded in a mortar to obtain a fat emulsion (hemp, pumpkin, poppy milk), which was spread on bread and eaten with flatbreads. This use of seeds is also known to the peoples of the Baltic and Urals.

Milk and dairy products

East Slavic peoples consumed mainly cow's milk, and Ukrainians, Russians of the southern provinces and the Urals also consumed sheep's milk; in some farms where goats were kept - also goat. They drank fresh milk (fresh - straight from the cow and chilled, boiled and baked), ate fermented milk (yogurt, sour) with bread and potatoes. In the North and Siberia, milk was frozen, cut into thin shavings and eaten with flatbread. Frozen milk was stored in winter, taken on the road, melted as needed.

Milk was consumed more often in the summer. They “whitened” soups with it, fried eggs with it, cooked milk porridge, and added it to porridge cooked in water. Baked milk was fermented with sour cream and Varenets was obtained. In the southern Russian provinces they made kaymak (a word borrowed from Turkic languages), which was cream with foam skimmed from baked milk (it was melted several times to obtain possible more foam). However, sour milk was more often consumed. To ferment, raw milk was placed in a warm place and sour cream or other sour products (yogurt, bread) were added to it.

Cottage cheese and cottage cheese were made from sour milk. To obtain cottage cheese (in many places it has long been called cheese), sour milk was drained and the whey was allowed to drain. For longer storage, it was pressed in a wooden vice and dried. If with bread, milk, sour cream. Russians in the Urals and Siberia rolled cottage cheese into cakes, like local peoples, and dried them in the sun. Cottage cheese was used to prepare a ritual dish - cheese Easter.

Cheeses were cooked at home only in some districts of central Russia, Kuban and Ukraine. To curdle milk, they used starter cultures (in particular, the stomach of a young calf or lamb). In Ukraine, feta cheese was made from sheep's milk. Industrial cheese making was of incomparably greater importance. Cheese was consumed mainly by urban residents.

Cream (the upper fat layer formed when milk settles) and sour cream (sour cream) were almost never consumed as a separate dish in peasant families. They were used as a seasoning.

With the spread of separators, the development of commercial butter-making and cheese-making, peasants who handed over milk to factories either did not leave it for their families at all, or were content with what they had removed. Among the wealthy urban and rural bourgeoisie and nobility, on the contrary, the use of concentrated dairy products: butter, cheese, cream became widespread. The latter were used as baby food, they were served with tea and coffee. Ice cream was prepared using cream (with the addition of eggs and sugar), and it was sold on the streets of cities and large villages.

Butter was churned from sour cream, cream and whole milk. The most common method was to prepare butter from sour cream by melting it in a Russian oven. At the same time, an oily mass was separated, which was cooled and beaten with wooden whorls, spatulas, spoons, and hands. The finished oil was washed in cold water. The resulting so-called butter could not be stored for long. It was consumed little as food, mainly by wealthy city dwellers, and in less affluent environments it was given to children little by little. Peasants usually melted butter in the oven and washed it in cold water, melted it again in the oven and filtered it. Its preparation is typical for all Eastern Slavs and is also known to some of the neighboring peoples, who borrowed it from the Russians (hence its common name Russian butter).

Meat and fish

The traditional meat diet of the Eastern Slavs was meager. This was partly due to the fact that in Tsarist Russia Livestock farming was one of the most backward branches of agriculture. Although cattle, pigs and sheep were bred everywhere, certain areas of animal husbandry and the predominant consumption of certain meat products developed. Thus, in the southern Russian provinces, Ukraine and Belarus, they ate mainly pork. Preference for it is also typical for Western Slavs. Beef was eaten everywhere, but very limitedly; it played a somewhat larger role in the northern provinces. In mountainous areas (Urals, Carpathians, Caucasus), Siberia and Central Asia, preference was given to lamb.

In the southern part of Siberia and Central Asia at the end of the 19th century, pig farming and, accordingly, pork consumption increased significantly, which was associated with the resettlement of people from the southern Russian provinces and Ukraine. Beyond the Urals, more livestock was bred and the population was better provided with meat food, however, seasonality was also acute here. This was caused by the established timing of slaughtering livestock in cold weather (November-December) and so on. that fresh meat does not withstand long-term storage. It came to the market at low prices, and at this time the poorest residents of the cities were better supplied with meat products. During the rest of the year, the rural population consumed them more.

Poultry: chickens, ducks and geese were bred everywhere (especially chickens), eaten mainly in the fall and winter, slaughtering the birds as needed. Poultry dishes were considered festive, and chicken meat and eggs were used, for example, to make wedding cakes. The eggs were used to make fried eggs (the eggs were put into a frying pan, keeping the yolks intact), scrambled eggs with milk (milk was added to the mashed eggs) and scrambled eggs (coarse flour and sugar were added to the mashed eggs and baked), which was eaten. washed down with milk. Eggs were also eaten boiled, baked and, less often, raw.

They tried to prepare the meat for future use, for which they salted it (put it in barrels and filled it with brine), smoked it and dried it. In winter, the carcasses were frozen. This method of storage was most suitable for the climate of Siberia, where it was constantly practiced. In the warm season, they ate mostly corned beef (salted meat).

Boiled meat was most often eaten. They cooked it in cabbage soup. borscht, noodles, but they were also eaten as a separate dish, and in rural areas usually without side dishes, and in cities - with vegetables and cereals. Roast meat was a festive dish; it was prepared with the addition of various seasonings. Whole carcasses of suckling pigs (sometimes baked in dough) and poultry were fried; According to tradition, for Christmas they cooked a roast goose (Christmas goose), and baked a pig or ham in the oven. Dishes of stewed meat with the addition of cereals or vegetables were common; they especially loved solyanka (pieces of meat stewed with sauerkraut). In Ukraine and Kuban, meat was generously mixed with lard when stewing.

A traditional dish of the Eastern Slavs, served on all family and many other holidays, was aspic (Russian jelly, jellied meat, Bel. scyudzen, Ukrainian jellied meat). To prepare it, bones with meat, legs and head, containing a lot of sticky substances, were boiled down. The boiled meat was selected, placed in bowls, poured with broth and placed in a cold place, where jellied meat was formed - a gelatinous jelly. Jelly was eaten with the addition of hot seasonings: horseradish, mustard, pepper, and sometimes kvass was served with it. The head was prepared separately as ritual dish(for Christmas, wedding). The entrails were also eaten. Giblets were considered most suitable for rassolnik - a hot dish cooked with the addition of chopped pickles.

In Ukraine, Belarus, and in some places in the southern Russian provinces they made sausage (Ukrainian kovbasa, white kaubasa). At the same time, lard and various spices were added to the meat. Sausages were also prepared from chopped liver, blood, mixing them with flour or cereal. Cleaned and washed animal intestines were stuffed with all this. Sausages were smoked or baked in ovens and filled with fat. Ukrainians, Belarusians, and occasionally Russians also smoked pork hams.

Animal fat was considered the most valuable product. The internal lard was rendered, poured into bowls, cooled and stored until consumption. The outer lard of pork carcasses was salted, cut into pieces, and stuffed into intestines or packed into boxes and barrels.

Lard was used for frying, soups and porridges were seasoned with it. Pieces lard fried in a frying pan and served with potatoes and porridge along with fried pork cracklings. Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Russians from the southern provinces seasoned cabbage soup and borscht with crushed lard (sometimes along with garlic). In winter they liked to eat frozen lard with hot potatoes. However, lard was a favorite, but not an everyday food. Him as the most high-calorie product we tried to save it for holidays, during intense field work, and on the road.

Meat and lard from domestic animals were scarce for the majority of the population. This deficit was partially compensated by hunting products.

Hunting was especially developed in the forest areas of Siberia and the European North. In the central regions, hunting has long been the privilege of feudal lords. They ate poultry carcasses (partridges, geese and ducks, swans, hazel grouse, quails, etc.), bear meat, hare meat, meat of wild boars, elk, deer, etc. But in accordance with ancient Slavic religious prohibitions, Old Believers, especially conservative ones in In terms of food, they did not eat hare, bear meat, or the meat of certain birds (pigeons, swans). Among the nobles, game was considered a particularly valuable dish, and for the landed nobility it was a matter of pride to serve game from their possessions and hunted with their own hands.

Meat, lard, and milk were considered “meat” food, which the Christian religion forbade consumption during weekly and annual fasts. This rule was very strictly adhered to by the majority of the population in the European part of the country, various Old Believer groups, and the Cossacks. The peasant masses in the North, Siberia and Central Asia, where the influence of the official church was not so strong, did not always and not everywhere observe it. The advanced layers of the Russian intelligentsia also refused to observe fasts.

Fish was no less, and at times even more important than meat, since it was considered a “semi-lenten” food; it was not eaten only on the days of the strictest fast. In northern Pomerania, where cultivated plants grew poorly, fish was the main daily food.

Fresh fish was boiled and fried in oil, sometimes topped with sour cream and eggs. A favorite dish was ukha - a fish broth served as a first course. Especially tasty is the fish soup, in which several different types of fish were boiled successively, and the last of them, the best, was served with yushka (decoction) to the table.

In the European North, in the Urals and Siberia, fish was baked in dough ( fish pie) and ate it with the bottom crust of the pie, soaked in fat. Belarusians baked fish on coals, in an oven, after clearing it of scales; in other areas they baked it in scales.

When preparing fish for future use, it was salted, dried, dried, fermented, and frozen.

They salted fish in barrels. Herring was in great demand. It was sold in all cities, and brought to villages remote from water bodies as gifts. Herring was the most affordable fish food for the urban poor, and in families where it was a luxury, they bought herring brine and consumed it with bread and potatoes. Of the dried fish, vobla (Ukrainian taran) was especially popular, which often replaced meat for the urban poor. Small fish, especially smelt, were dried; in winter, cabbage soup and stews were cooked with it.

In the northern coastal zone of the country, fish was fermented in barrels, for which it was filled with weak brine and kept warm. The fermentation process that developed softened the meat and bones, giving the fish a specific pungent taste. It was seasoned with onions and sour milk and eaten with bread. In the Primorsky region of Eastern Siberia, fish for pickling was placed in earthen pits, where it was fermented. This ancient method of canning was preserved until the end of the 19th century among the Russians, as well as among the neighboring peoples of the North, where the food of the population was depleted in vitamins.

In winter, the fish was frozen and stored in this form. Russians in Eastern Siberia, like the local population, ate stroganina - finely chopped frozen fish.

In areas rich in sturgeon and salmon fish, they prepared caviar, which was very valuable on the world market - black (sturgeon) and red (salmon), keeping it in strong brine. Such caviar was a delicacy and was consumed mainly by rich city dwellers; it was available to the rural population only where it was mined. Caviar was eaten with bread, pancakes, and red caviar was also baked into pies, adding chopped onions. Near the seas and large bodies of water, caviar of any other fish was used, which, like sturgeon and salmon, was high-calorie product and an important source of vitamins. Therefore, they ate a lot of salted caviar, and in the north of Siberia they made flat cakes, pancakes, and pancakes from frozen and mint caviar.

Meals

Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians ate three to four times a day. Breakfast (Russian breakfast, zautrok, Ukrainian snidanok, sshdannya, white snyadannya) was early, usually at sunrise (5 - 6 am) and quite hearty (they ate a lot of bread with tea or milk, fresh or salted vegetables and etc.). Lunch (Ukrainian ooid, white abyad, breakfast) was arranged in the first half of the day (10 - 12 o'clock). It was the most abundant meal. They served two or three dishes, and always among the first - liquid ones: hot in winter, and sometimes cold in summer.

In the summer, in the afternoon (4-5 o'clock) there was an afternoon snack (Russian afternoon tea, g.auzhina, Ukrainian. noon, noon. Bel. paludzin, pydvyachorak), consisting of tea, milk, and light snacks. We had dinner in the evening, at sunset (Russian supper, Ukrainian supper, Bel. vyachera), with anything left over from lunch or with tea, milk, or a light snack.

On holidays, they tried to prepare food as plentiful as possible. The table was especially richly decorated for Easter and Christmas, when after a long fast it was allowed to eat meat. Several courses were served for Christmas dinner. Here is a description of such a dinner among Ukrainian peasants: “First of all, they have a snack Lenten pies, drink a glass of vodka, then serve yesterday’s cabbage and peas. Having finished with Lenten dishes, they proceed to the fast ones: initially they serve pies with pork filling and with dumplings coated with buckwheat flour (baked the day before), and heated sausage. Next comes cabbage with pork. First, the cabbage itself is eaten, and the meat is served separately on a wooden plate. The owner cuts the meat himself, adds salt, takes the first piece for himself, and then the rest take it, according to seniority. After the cabbage, they serve lokshina (noodles), and again, they eat the noodles first, and then the goose, which the owner also cuts. In conclusion, yesterday’s kutia with honey or poppy seeds and, finally, “uzvar” appear on the table.

The Easter meal “breaking the fast” was no less plentiful. They loved not only to eat heartily themselves, but also to feed to the full the guest who came to the house.

Hospitality - the ability to generously receive guests - was considered a great advantage of the owner. Guests were served the best dishes available in the house (the Russians had a saying: “What is in the oven is all swords on the table,” similar ones were common among Belarusians and Ukrainians). Feasts were especially abundant among merchants and nobles and landowners, where each owner sought to outdo the others with a variety of dishes and drinks. The meals of the wealthy classes were also based on folk cuisine.