I always buy only “Doctor’s” from the store. I don’t like anything else, especially anything with bacon. Smoked ham is okay once a year, ham is so-so rare, but “Doctorskaya” is super.
But the history of the “Doctor’s” sausage is a reflection of almost the entire Soviet history with its kinks and complexities.
Look...
The 1930s of the twentieth century were both difficult and joyful for the USSR at the same time. The fratricidal Civil War has ended and the national economy is being restored. Almost throughout the entire country, the unification of individual peasant farms into collective farms has been completed, and the kulaks have been liquidated as a class. Great construction projects are underway, a powerful industry is being created, which a decade later will allow the country to win the Great War...
Despite all the great plans, there is not enough meat in the country - this is due to the previous difficult years. And the health of the population must be restored and maintained - the builders of communism must be strong and healthy. That's why the idea arises to create a product with high content protein that could replace meat. A special role in the creation and development Food Industry in the USSR and in the history of the “Doctor’s” sausage will be played by Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, People’s Commissar of the Food Industry of the USSR since 1934. It was he who had to create the country's food industry from scratch. Mikoyan chose the USA as a model, where this industry was already quite well developed. Thanks to the borrowing of “industrial” American food, several varieties of sausage and frankfurters, processed milk appeared on the tables of Soviet citizens industrially, a variety of canned food, ice cream...
Under the close personal control of Mikoyan, the construction of several large food industry enterprises began in the USSR - for the production of milk, sausages, and canned food.
April 29, 1936 A.I. Mikoyan signed an order to begin production of several varieties of sausages, a special place among which was occupied by sausage intended to “improve the health of persons who had poor health as a result of the Civil War and suffered from the tyranny of the tsarist regime.” It was assumed that this type of sausage would be intended for those receiving treatment in sanatoriums and hospitals.
The recipe for this product was developed by the best specialists in the country, doctors, and employees of the All-Russian Research Institute of Meat Industry. According to the recipe (GOST 23670-79) in “Doctor’s Boiled Sausage” premium"100 kg of sausage should contain 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs or melange and 2 kg cow's milk dry whole or low fat. The minced meat for the sausage was made from fresh meat and had to be double chopped. A minimum of cooking ingredients were used as seasonings. table salt; granulated sugar or glucose; ground nutmeg or cardamom, spicy seasonings were excluded.
There is a legend that initially they wanted to give this sausage the name “Stalin’s”. However, the authors of the recipe quickly realized that the combination “Stalin’s sausage” could be incorrectly interpreted by the all-powerful NKVD and came up with a name that remained in history and well reflected the quality and purpose of this product.
Until the 50s, the recipe and quality of the sausage remained unchanged according to the standard. Of course, the sausages produced by different meat processing plants varied. This depended on the quality of the raw materials supplied to the plant and on the experience of the employees. The ideal and model was the sausage of the Mikoyanovsky meat processing plant - the capital's giant, which primarily supplied the nomenclature, purchased the most expensive and high-quality raw materials. At the same time, the sausage was by no means an integral part of the special ration of representatives of the party and state elite - it could be bought at almost any grocery store.
Interestingly, the cost of “Doctorskaya” was significantly higher than its retail price. In Doktorskaya stores they sold for 2 rubles 20 kopecks. With this money in the mid-70s it was possible to buy, for example, 220 boxes of matches, 11 seals waffle cup, 10 packs of Belomorkanal cigarettes, i.e. the price of this sausage was quite acceptable for ordinary citizens.
Changes in the quality of sausage began only in the 70s and this was primarily due to the difficulties that continuously reformed agriculture began to experience and, of course, with the drought and crop failure of the early 70s. It was at this time that it was allowed to add to minced sausage up to 2% starch or flour.
Dramatic changes in the fate of sausage - like all countries - will begin in the mid-80s. The composition of the raw materials will change, and in 1997 a new GOST will appear, in accordance with which the name “doctoral” will turn into a brand.
There is such an addition. Here’s the phrase: According to the recipe (GOST 23670-79), “Boiled doctor’s sausage of the highest grade” per 100 kg of sausage should have contained 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs or melange and 2 kg of whole cow’s milk powder or low fat"
This is all great, but there is another point in this GOST:
2.6. It is allowed to use when producing boiled sausages, frankfurters, small sausages and meat loaves:
food phosphates in an amount of 0.3% by weight of raw materials (in terms of anhydrous);
-sodium ascorbate or ascorbic acid in the amount of 50 g per 100 kg of raw materials;
Smoking preparations approved by the USSR Ministry of Health;
Pasteurized cow's milk with mass fraction fat 2.5 and 3.2% in an amount of 8 kg instead of 1 kg of whole milk powder with a decrease in the mass of added moisture by 7 kg;
Cow pasteurized low-fat milk in the amount of 11.5 kg instead of 1 kg of dry skim milk with a decrease in the mass of added moisture by 10.5 kg;
Powdered cream with a fat content of 42% in an amount of 1 kg instead of 2.1 kg of cream from cow's milk with 20% fat content;
Cow dry whole milk with a fat content of 25% in an amount of 1 kg instead of 610 g of dry cream with a fat content of 42% or 1281 g of cow's milk cream with 20% fat content;
egg powder in the amount of 274 g instead of 1 kg of melange or 1 kg (24 pcs.) chicken eggs;
Trimmed buffalo meat, yak meat instead of trimmed beef meat of the appropriate grade in the production of premium sausages up to 50%, first and second grades up to 100%;
Boiled sausages, frankfurters, sausages and meat loaves of the highest and first grade with production defects (scrap, deformed loaves, with minced meat over the shell, broth-fat edema, etc.) for the production of boiled sausages, sausages, sausages and meat loaves of the first grade; second grade - for the production of sausages and meat loaves of the second grade in an amount of up to 3% by weight of raw materials in excess of the recipe;
Hemoglobin preparation or food blood in an amount of 0.5-1% by weight of raw materials;
Spice and garlic extracts instead of natural ones;
Trimmed beef trimmings in quantities up to 10% - for beef sausages and sausages of the first grade and up to 30% - for tea sausage, meat loaf tea to the mass of trimmed beef of the second grade, provided for in the recipes, in exchange for its corresponding quantity;
Trimmed pork trimmings in an amount of up to 10% - for boiled sausages, meat loaves, first-grade sausages and up to 20% - for boiled sausages, second-grade meat loaves to the weight of trimmed semi-fat pork, provided for in the recipes, in return for its corresponding amount. The joint use of trimmed beef trimmings and trimmed pork trimmings is not allowed;
Protein stabilizer to the weight of raw materials in an amount of up to 5% - for boiled sausages, sausages and meat loaves of the first grade and up to 6% - for boiled sausages and meat loaves of the second grade;
The mass of beef, pork and lamb to the mass of raw materials in an amount of up to 5% - for boiled sausages, sausages and meat loaves of the first grade and up to 6% - for boiled sausages and meat loaves of the second grade. For individual lamb sausage - up to 15% of the meat mass from lean lamb instead of single-grade trimmed lamb;
Beef, pork or lamb mass obtained by processing bones in saline solutions, in the amount of 4 kg instead of 1 kg of meat mass obtained by mechanical pressing, with a decrease in the mass of added water by 3 kg;
Food plasma (serum) from the blood of slaughtered animals to the mass of raw materials in the following quantities:
up to 5% instead of added water when producing boiled sausages, frankfurters, small sausages and premium meat loaves;
up to 15% instead of added water when producing boiled sausages, frankfurters, sausages and meat loaves of the first and second grade;
up to 10% instead of 2% trimmed pork and 8% water or 3% trimmed beef (or lamb) and 7% water
or up to 15% instead of 3% trimmed pork meat and 12% water or 4% trimmed beef (or lamb) meat and 11% water;
Cuttings obtained from stripping boiled smoked meats instead of raw beef or pork fat in an amount of up to 10% when producing beef sausages, beef sausages, beef meat bread;
Pasteurized low-fat cow's milk instead of added water in an amount 5% higher than the recommended water norm, except for doctor's sausages, milk sausages, with sorbitol, regular sausages, and milk sausages;
0Not a single product in the USSR and after the USSR was the subject of so many legends, songs, epics and tales as about Soviet sausage. As a result, legends mixed with fairy tales, fairy tales with myths, and historical truth, as usual, in the end completely drowned in this abyss, like Atlantis. Is it now possible to extract it from this seabed? No you can not... :)
One of beautiful legends, for example, says that the ancestor of all Soviet sausages was the People's Commissar of the food industry Anastas Mikoyan, who in April 1936 signed an order for the production of new meat products: Doctorskaya, Lyubitelskaya, Tea, Veal and Krakovskaya sausages, Milk sausages and Hunter's sausages. At the same time, the name of the Doctor's sausage is due to the fact that it was created specifically for “patients with poor health as a result of the Civil War and tsarist despotism.” The Doctor's recipe included: for 100 kg of sausage - 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs and 2 kg of cow's milk...
And this is a characteristic memory of one of the bloggers about taste Soviet sausage: “I, like probably many people, associate sausage with the taste of childhood. I remember how after work my mother would bring a roll of paper with “Doctorskaya” - its aroma spread throughout the apartment. It didn’t stay in the refrigerator for a long time, it died in the same evening. Oh, it was time!"
But the main question remains, which divides supporters and opponents of the USSR into two irreconcilably hostile camps: was there even sausage in the USSR? Or did she not exist, but there were only legends about her? Supporters of the USSR respond that there was sausage and present numerous photographs:
1949. Shop. Kyiv
1952. Moscow. Sale of sausages in the former Eliseevsky store
1958. Kyiv. Shop "Ukrainian sausages"
1960s Grocery store. Leningrad
1980. Sausage "Krakovskaya"
livejournal.com/maysuryan/46825033/13848 51/1384851_600.jpg" alt="" title="">
Cooperative trade in the late USSR. Products in cooperation were sold at higher prices than in state trade
Perestroika. Prices in the cooperative store look prohibitively high, exceeding the state prices several times
Their opponents respond by presenting photos of empty counters and queues at Soviet Kolbasa stores. It is reasonable to ask: if there was sausage, would people stand in lines for it? We wouldn't stand. Which means she didn't exist...
Consequently, all these photos of sausage abundance in the USSR are simply clever fakes (although there was no such word then) of Soviet propaganda.
They also post statistics on sausage production in the USSR now, and it turns out that now we eat less of them than then.
Anti-Soviet people counter that, as Mark Twain pointed out, there are three types of lies - just lies, blatant lies and statistics. Of course, the insightful writer meant Soviet statistics...
Thus, Soviet sausage turns out to be an analogue of Schrödinger’s cat in the world of gastronomy - it seems to exist and not exist at the same time. And this dispute has every chance to last a long time - years, and possibly decades. I think the only chance to resolve it is to conduct a historical experiment! Simply restore socialism and the USSR, and see whether there will be sausage in it or not...
I, like probably many others, associate sausage with the taste of childhood. I remember how after work my mother brought a roll of paper with “Doctor’s” - its aroma spread throughout the apartment. It didn’t sit in the refrigerator for a long time, it died that same evening. Eh, it was time! “What’s special about this vaunted 2.20 sausage?” - the youth are now surprised, not having caught Soviet era. Nothing special, a mere trifle - they just made sausage from meat!…
It is no secret that no product in Soviet society, especially, so to speak, in the late Soviet period, had such social and cultural significance as sausage.
It was not just a product, but a kind of symbol of the Soviet system. A sign of prosperity during the years of total shortage, the reason and most frequent reason for nostalgia of several generations of emigrants, a full-fledged theme of the most various forms folklore and even literary works.
We knew from childhood: our sausage is the most delicious! I mean, Soviet sausage, the paradox of which consisted, firstly, in a strange discrepancy between cost and quality, when the second was much superior to the first, and secondly, in availability at a price and inaccessibility by... method of acquisition, because behind the product itself there is nothing There is everyday use I had to travel to other cities and stand in kilometer-long queues.
Cheap food was needed by hungry Russia in the 30s. To carry out the instructions of the party and government, Anastas Mikoyan went to Chicago - the most advanced sausage production at that time was located there. Soviet officials looked at a local meat processing plant and ordered exactly the same one for themselves. True, the recipe for the sausage was already developed in Moscow.
Renaissance Russian sausages took place when Soviet power was already firmly established in Russia. Namely, in April 1936, People's Commissar of the Food Industry Anastas Mikoyan signed an order for the production of new meat products: Doctor's, Lyubitelskaya, Tea, Veal and Krakow sausages, Milk sausages and Hunter's sausages.
Some of the recipes were developed anew, others were restored from earlier times. It is noteworthy that Doctor's sausage was specially created for “patients with poor health as a result of the Civil War and tsarist despotism.”
Recipe for "amendment" public health"was verified to the smallest detail: 100 kg of sausage contained 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs and 2 kg of cow's milk.
Over the past 70 years, GOST standards for this sausage have changed, and more than once: both the war and the Soviet shortage had an impact. The first varieties of Soviet sausage differed in the quality of meat. In “Lyubitelskaya” and “Doctorskaya” it was of the highest grade, and somewhere - first and even second.
During these same years, more than 20 large meat processing plants were built - in Moscow, Leningrad, Semipalatinsk, Engels, Dnepropetrovsk, Sverdlovsk and other cities, equipped with the most modern equipment for that time. It was not in vain that A. Mikoyan went to get acquainted with sausage production in USA!
During the war years, the total losses of the meat processing industry exceeded 1 billion rubles. Many meat processing plants were partially or completely destroyed. The raw material base also suffered. The German army removed and slaughtered 17 million heads of cattle, 7 million horses, 20 million pigs, 27 million sheep and goats from the occupied territory of the USSR.
However, unprecedented measures were taken to preserve the livestock and provide the army and rear with meat products. Millions of large and small livestock and horses were evacuated from the western territories.
In accordance with wartime requirements, the assortment was restructured towards the production of transportable products that are less susceptible to spoilage, such as corned beef, smoked meats and canned food, as well as semi-smoked and smoked sausages.
For the civilian population, many enterprises have established the production of bone broths and liver sausages. During the difficult war years, in an environment of acute shortage of raw materials, especially in besieged Leningrad, opportunities were sought to use all kinds of substitutes for meat raw materials, such as glycerin, albumin, gelatin, agar-agar, edible herbs and even tops of garden crops.
When a flooded barge with peas was raised from the bottom of Ladoga in January 1942, the sausage factory quickly developed a technology for producing pea sausage with the addition of onions, cereals and flour. But this was only a forced concession to wartime. People worked 12–14 hours, exceeding the plan and providing the army and rear with food, and, of course, they won!
From the moment of its “birth” until the end of the 50s, the main recipe of “Doctorskaya” remained practically unchanged. In the 60s, experiments began with fattening animals. This affected the sausage: it began to smell like fish, sometimes chickens, and sometimes like a chemical plant producing fertilizers.
The post-war restoration of the destroyed economy was followed by an era of technical re-equipment of meat processing plants, which coincided with a deterioration in productivity and insufficient growth of livestock numbers. The reason for the decline in animal quality was the 1965 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, which cited the previously pursued policy in the field of animal husbandry.
During Brezhnev's reign, meat production in the USSR began to decline. Scientists have begun developing technologies for combined meat products: sausages have soy protein, milk protein, so-called blood products and even such “indigestible” things as sodium casenate.
To legitimize the presence of “cardboard” in “Doctorskaya” and other sausages, new GOST standards have appeared that take into account all these additives. For example, the boiled sausage called "Breakfast" officially consisted of sodium casenate, wheat flour And potato starch.
Insufficient funding for livestock production due to the arms race and other problems in agriculture have led to a shortage of raw materials for food production. However, it was only in the 70s that the first changes in sausage recipes appeared. As a result of the unprecedented drought of 1972, hundreds of thousands of head of cattle had to be put under the knife due to lack of feed.
In 1974, some relaxations were introduced into GOST standards for the first time. IN chopped meat it was allowed to add up to 2% starch or flour or animal protein substitutes - milk or blood. None of the sausage consumers could feel any changes. And the underreported 2% of meat throughout the country provided huge savings. In addition, cosenates (substitutes) cost mere pennies compared to the price of a kilogram of beef.
In a word, by allowing additives, we, in some way, even took another step towards communism: we reduced the price per kilogram of “Doctorskaya” from 2.3 rubles. up to 2.2 rub.
However, temporary difficulties with raw materials turned out to be permanent. A concept such as a deficit arose when sausages kilometer-long queues lined up, a Soviet phenomenon appeared - the so-called “sausage” trains (many still remember this joke: What is it? Long, green and smells like sausage? - Moscow train).
The state skillfully supported the demand for sausage by creating a mythical aura of mystery and legends based primarily on original recipe preparing Soviet sausage. A planned economy that did not know marketing sometimes gave birth to real advertising masterpieces, as a result of which any sausage was simply swept off the shelves.
So they said that the “Member of the Politburo” sausage would soon go on sale, on the cut of which Lenin’s profile made of lard was visible. Or Ostankino sausage is made from the remains of the enemies of socialism. Although there were those who considered K. Simonov to be the author of her recipe. Remember in “Battle on the Ice”: “People and horses have already mixed together...”
The shortage was replaced by a system of coupons for basic foodstuffs, then - a total deficit and, in the end, - the victory of market relations and the collapse Soviet Union.
It was then that people poured from impoverished Russia to prosperous countries for an established life, for full counters, for good sausage. Because they began to accuse domestic sausage of all sorts of sins - they allegedly add toilet paper to it, and buttons/human nails/rat tails and other horrors are found in it, and in general they are made from who knows what.
And a flood of imported sausage poured into Russia. However, it turned out to be somewhat strange, unusual and even - scary to think - completely tasteless, in any case, our consumers expected more from it.
As it turned out, high tech allow the use of not the best raw materials in sausage. Moreover, in the West, in general, it is not customary to use even first-grade meat for sausage; it is only sold for sale. Well, high-quality raw materials are incompatible with market relations! And it was foreigners who valued our sausages very highly, paying tribute to them when visiting the USSR.
And no wonder. After all, even the most popular and quite affordable boiled sausages Lyubitelskaya and Doctorskaya consisted of meat, and of the highest grade. That is, for 100 kg of top-grade boiled Lyubitelskaya sausage, 35 kg of top-grade trimmed beef, 40 kg of lean lean pork, and 25 kg of back fat were required.
Similarly, for 100 kg of Doctor's, 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs and 2 kg of cow's milk were consumed. Sausages with this composition were truly unique in quality and nutritional value! Unless, of course, some of the raw materials went “to the left”...
If you believe the statistics, until 1990 in the USSR there were more than 40 kg of sausage per person per year. It turns out to be a paradox! The Soviet Union, the world leader in sausage production per capita, never had it. Sometimes the above-mentioned one was instantly swept off the shelves, sometimes the sellers held it under threat of dismissal.
And after some time, when the fainting at the full foreign counters ended, the concept of “sausage emigration” was replaced by the concept of “sausage nostalgia.” And stories appeared about how some of the former compatriots allegedly established the production of “those” sausages according to “the same” recipes. And they allegedly had unprecedented success in the West, especially among their former compatriots.
And for those who still did not get such sausage, Russian relatives and friends from Russia brought domestic sausages as a gift. However, the Soviet sausage from childhood could not be returned; both the taste and the price became different. Or had those affected by the tsarist regime been cured by that time, and sausage as a healing remedy had lost its relevance, and therefore disappeared?
However, not only emigrants, but also Russian residents are nostalgic for Soviet-era sausages. And, as you know, it is Soviet brands that are bought most of all - Doctorskaya, Lyubitelskaya, Krakovskaya, Moskovskaya and, of course, Servelat.
The affordability of sausages reflected both the idea of equality and the secondary role of the peasantry, whose labor was so modestly paid. And cheap sausage made from high-quality meat disappeared simultaneously with the disappearance of the Soviet Union.
However, it did not completely disappear. After all, a modern GOST for sausages has been developed, preserving continuity with the previous, Soviet one. And although there is no “same” sausage and there cannot be, because everything changes - raw materials, technologies, packaging, Soviet brands live and prosper. But today, to buy Lyubitelskaya from Moskovskaya, you don’t have to go to other cities or stand in line at six o’clock in the morning.
Today, for most Russians, sausage is the number one meat product, although it is more of a snack than a meal. “Doctor’s” remains one of the most beloved and popular. Many enterprises produce sausage, and both according to GOST and TU - technical specifications, developed at this enterprise. Therefore, on the shelves you can often find several types of “Doctorskaya”, and any other sausage, in different casings and at different prices.
Today, technical conditions (TU) are approved not by the Council of Ministers of Russia, but by the enterprise itself, which operates according to the principle: less meat- more substitutes. From the point of view of product quality, the most hectic time is considered to be the early 90s, when competition for sales markets was life and death. It happened that we ate sausage... without sausage at all, that is, without meat! Manufacturers made a fat emulsion, added “flavor” - and it was done.
On great proletarian holidays, minced chicken was added to this “sausage.” Nowadays, the situation has not improved much - second-grade sausages are 70% (!) composed of soybeans and various chemical additives, which have nothing to do with meat. Soybean absorbs moisture very well; 1 kg of such powder requires 5-6 liters of water.
We calculate: if up to 10 kg of soy is used for 100 kg of individual sausage, it means that up to 60 liters of water also goes there. Here's 70 kg out of 100 that are not meat at all! Carrageenan is also widely used: vegetable protein based seaweed. It is very moisture-intensive, and when mixed with water in the final product, it well retains the density of the product and its solidity.
Soviet sausage will always be remembered with nostalgia. Grandparents - that in the days of their youth it was real, made of meat. Their children - how difficult it was to get it in principle, and if it was possible, then the sandwich became a holiday. And how the coupons were sold. And today's youth are already accustomed to coming to the store and choosing sausage according to their taste and wallet.
IN Soviet times the sausage was perfect. Any technologist of any sausage production will confirm this to you. Nowadays you won’t be able to get sausage of this quality, even if you try to make it without sparing money.
Reference: In 1990, 2,283 thousand tons of sausage were produced in the RSFSR, 15.4 kg per capita. In 2009, 2,238 thousand tons of sausage were produced in the Russian Federation, 15.7 kg per capita.
1958 Kyiv. Shop "Ukrainian sausages"
All Soviet sausages were made according to GOST. For example Doctoral:
According to GOST 23670-79 per 100 kg of sausage
premium trimmed beef - 25;
pork, trimmed, semi-fat - 70;
chicken eggs or melange - 3;
Whole or skimmed cow's milk powder - 2;
table salt - 2,090;
sodium nitrite - 0.0071;
granulated sugar or glucose - 0.2;
ground nutmeg or cardamom - 0.05.
There were no toilet paper, preservatives, flavor enhancers, dyes, carrageenans, vegetable, animal or milk proteins, or phosphates in the composition.
The fact that GOST was strictly observed and for the slightest violation the person responsible would have been imprisoned for a very long time, I hope you have no doubt?
Currently there are no such recipes. All of the above additives, which did not exist then, but now exist, do not improve the quality of the sausage at all, but allow the sale of water and the use of low-quality meat (frozen, stale, of the wrong fat content).
Further. Let’s say for luxury stores they decided to make a classic Doctor’s, despite the price. Well, let’s say we even bought eggs and nutmeg with cardomom were not found in functional mixtures. Where can I get meat? In Russia and Europe, cattle are now fed such things that even in terms of protein content they are fundamentally different from “normal” Soviet food. You can buy good meat (you can, but it’s expensive and they buy other ones) in South America. But it won’t be possible to deliver it chilled. And from frozen meat, which is now used by at least 90% of meat processing enterprises, it is impossible to make “correct” sausage. I’ll tell you a secret - you can’t cook anything good from frozen meat, and in stores, in the vast majority of cases, defrosted [thawed] meat is sold under the guise of chilled meat.
I talked at several enterprises with technologists who were trying to produce Soviet-quality sausage. Everyone said that it didn’t work out due to the inability to find high-quality meat raw materials. Even when purchasing raw meat from private traders in a live form, they are convinced that households are also fed “modern” feed, which does not have a very good effect on the meat.
Well, I’ll give you an example of a modern recipe that you like (I won’t write the specific names of spices and proteins):
Mechanically separated meat 45
Chicken skin 35
Animal protein 2
Water 18
Table salt 1.8
Spice mixture Combi 0.8
Dye 0.06
Milk flavor 0.06
Preservative freshener 0.3
Dry smoke 0.02
Emulsifier (sodium alginate) 0.5
Sodium nitrite 0.0075
Process water (ice) 8
Please note that out of 111 kg of sausage, they sold you only 45 kg of meat, and 26 kg of water, 40 kg of other nasty things, but according to statistics, all this will pass like meat. Eat, dear Russians.
What about toilet paper? About ten years ago, a technologist I knew took out the price lists of Western suppliers and said: “Well, the dream of toilet paper in sausage has come true - they are offering us edible cellulose for sausage products.”
By the way, how much of this sausage was made in the RSFSR?
In 1990 - 2,283 thousand tons, 15.4 kg per poor Soviet soul. This was very little, so there was a terrible shortage of sausage. People could drop everything they were doing and go on a trip to Moscow for a couple of days to bring a “Doctorskaya” stick and three “Krakovskaya” rings to starving children. Soviet men only took women as wives who had several such sausage walkers behind them...
But the terrible times of scarcity are over, the Great Sausage Revolution swept away the retrogrades from power, and the doors of freedom and abundance opened. In 2009, in the Russian Federation, having destroyed the livestock population and many totalitarian meat processing plants, with the help of thousands of small sausage factories and without any unnecessary livestock, using only naked entrepreneurial ingenuity, they produced as many as 2,238 thousand tons of sausage products, or 15.7 kg per free Russian soul . Today we can see sausage on every shabby counter, at any price from 60 to 1260 rubles per kilogram, and the new generation of Russians does not want to believe that someone could specifically go to hell for such crap. Before our eyes, Soviet sausage has become a legend.
I continue to acquaint the reader with the history of Soviet sausage using the 1960 reference book (Konnikov A.G. Directory of sausage production and semi-finished meat products. 2nd ed., revised, supplemented. - M.: Pishchepromizdat, 1960). Today we will find out the composition and technological requirements to the production of Soviet boiled sausages. Did you add water and ice to the sausage? pork skin, soy fillers, crushed bones, preservatives, toilet paper and the blood of repressed dissidents?
* * *
Moscow and sausage
Population of Moscow:
1912 - 1.617 million people
1915 - 1.817 million people.
Main meat. Statistical and economic reference book. - M.: Pishchepromizdat, 1936.
* * *
210 varieties of Soviet sausage and smoked meats.
List of all main varieties of sausages and deli meats, which were produced in 1960 at meat processing plants in the USSR. So, the assortment of Soviet sausages and smoked products according to the 1960 reference book (A.G. Konnikov, Directory for the production of sausages and semi-finished meat products. 2nd ed., revised, supplemented. - M.: Pishchepromizdat, 1960):
The food industry of the USSR in 1960 produced 1 million 351 thousand tons of sausage products, or 6.3 kg per capita.
As the memory of eyewitnesses suggests, by 1970 the situation with sausage in Soviet trade had worsened, obviously because Soviet industry produced 2 million 286 thousand tons of sausage products in 1970, or 9.4 kg per capita.
I, like probably many others, associate sausage with the taste of childhood. I remember how after work my mother brought a roll of paper with “Doctor’s” - its aroma spread throughout the apartment. It didn’t sit in the refrigerator for a long time, it died that same evening. Eh, it was time! “What’s special about this vaunted 2.20 sausage?” - young people who have not lived through the Soviet era are surprised now. Nothing special, a mere trifle - just sausage made from meat!...
It is no secret that no product in Soviet society, especially, so to speak, in the late Soviet period, had such social and cultural significance as sausage.
It was not just a product, but a kind of symbol of the Soviet system. A sign of prosperity in the years of total shortage, the reason and most frequent reason for the nostalgia of several generations of emigrants, a full-fledged theme of the most diverse forms of folklore and even literary works.
We knew from childhood: our sausage is the most delicious! I mean, Soviet sausage, the paradox of which consisted, firstly, in a strange discrepancy between cost and quality, when the second was much superior to the first, and secondly, in availability at a price and inaccessibility by... method of acquisition, because behind the product itself there is nothing To eat everyday food, I had to travel to other cities and stand in kilometer-long queues.
Cheap food was needed by hungry Russia in the 1930s. To carry out the instructions of the party and government, Anastas Mikoyan went to Chicago - the most advanced sausage production at that time was located there. Soviet officials looked at a local meat processing plant and ordered exactly the same one for themselves. True, the recipe for the sausage was already developed in Moscow.
The revival of Russian sausages took place when Soviet power was already firmly established in Russia. Namely, in April 1936, the People's Commissar of the Food Industry, Anastas Mikoyan, signed an order for the production of new meat products: Doktorskaya, Lyubitelskaya, Tea, Veal and Krakovskaya sausages, Milk sausages and Hunter's sausages.
Some of the recipes were developed anew, others were restored from earlier times. It is noteworthy that Doctor’s sausage was specially created for “sick people with poor health as a result of the Civil War and tsarist despotism.”
The recipe for “amendment of public health” was verified to the smallest detail: 100 kg of sausage contained 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs and 2 kg of cow’s milk.
Over the past 70 years, GOST standards for this sausage have changed, and more than once: both the war and the Soviet shortage had an impact. The first varieties of Soviet sausage differed in the quality of meat. In Lyubitelskaya and Doktorskaya it was of the highest grade, and in some places it was first and even second.
During these same years, more than 20 large meat processing plants were built - in Moscow, Leningrad, Semipalatinsk, Engels, Dnepropetrovsk, Sverdlovsk and other cities, equipped with the most modern equipment for that time. It was not in vain that A. Mikoyan went to get acquainted with sausage production in the USA!
During the war years, the total losses of the meat processing industry exceeded 1 billion rubles. Many meat processing plants were partially or completely destroyed. The raw material base also suffered. The German army removed and slaughtered 17 million heads of cattle, 7 million horses, 20 million pigs, 27 million sheep and goats from the occupied territory of the USSR.
However, unprecedented measures were taken to preserve the livestock and provide the army and rear with meat products. Millions of large and small livestock and horses were evacuated from the western territories.
In accordance with wartime requirements, the assortment was restructured towards the production of transportable products that are less susceptible to spoilage, such as corned beef, smoked and canned meats, as well as semi-smoked and smoked sausages.
For the civilian population, many enterprises established the production of bone broths and liver sausages. During the difficult war years, in an environment of acute shortage of raw materials, especially in besieged Leningrad, opportunities were sought to use all kinds of substitutes for meat raw materials, such as glycerin, albumin, gelatin, agar-agar, edible herbs and even tops of garden crops.
When a flooded barge with peas was raised from the bottom of Ladoga in January 1942, the sausage factory quickly developed a technology for producing pea sausage with the addition of onions, cereals and flour. But this was only a forced concession to wartime. People worked 12-14 hours, exceeding the plan and providing the army and rear with food, and, of course, they won!
From the moment of its “birth” until the end of the 50s, the main recipe of “Doctorskaya” remained practically unchanged. In the 60s, experiments began with fattening animals. This affected the sausage: it began to smell like fish, sometimes chickens, and sometimes like a chemical plant producing fertilizers.
The post-war restoration of the destroyed economy was followed by an era of technical re-equipment of meat processing plants, which coincided with a deterioration in productivity and insufficient growth of livestock numbers. The reason for the decline in animal quality was the 1965 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, which cited the previously pursued policy in the field of animal husbandry.
During Brezhnev's reign, meat production in the USSR began to decline. Scientists began developing technologies for combined meat products: soy protein, milk protein, so-called blood products, and even such “indigestible” things as sodium casenate appeared in sausage.
To legitimize the presence of “cardboard” in “Doctorskaya” and other sausages, new GOST standards have appeared that take into account all these additives. For example, the cooked breakfast sausage officially consisted of sodium casenate, wheat flour and potato starch.
Insufficient funding for livestock production due to the arms race and other problems in agriculture have led to a shortage of raw materials for food production. However, it was only in the 70s that the first changes in sausage recipes appeared. As a result of the unprecedented drought of 1972, hundreds of thousands of head of cattle had to be put under the knife due to lack of feed.
In 1974, some relaxations were introduced into GOST standards for the first time. It was allowed to add up to 2% starch or flour or animal protein substitutes - milk or blood - to minced meat. None of the sausage consumers could feel any changes. And the underreported 2% of meat throughout the country provided huge savings. In addition, cosenates (substitutes) cost mere pennies compared to the price of a kilogram of beef.
In a word, by allowing additives, in some way we even took another step towards communism: we reduced the price per kilogram of “Doctorskaya” from 2.3 rubles. up to 2.2 rub.
However, temporary difficulties with raw materials turned out to be permanent. A concept such as a shortage arose, when kilometer-long queues lined up for sausage products, a Soviet phenomenon appeared - the so-called “sausage” trains (many still remember this joke: What is it? Long, green and smells like sausage? - Moscow train).
The state skillfully supported the demand for sausage by creating a mythical aura of mystery and legends, based primarily on the original recipe for preparing Soviet sausage. A planned economy that did not know marketing sometimes gave birth to real advertising masterpieces, as a result of which any sausage was simply swept off the shelves.
So they said that the “Member of the Politburo” sausage would soon go on sale, on the cut of which Lenin’s profile made of lard was visible. Or Ostankino sausage is made from the remains of the enemies of socialism. Although there were those who considered K. Simonov to be the author of her recipe. Remember in “Battle on the Ice”: “People and horses have already mixed together...”
The shortage gave way to a system of coupons for basic food products, then to a total shortage and, ultimately, to the victory of market relations and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It was then that people poured from impoverished Russia to prosperous countries for an established life, for full counters, for good sausage. Because they began to accuse domestic sausage of all sorts of sins - they allegedly add toilet paper to it, and buttons/human nails/rat tails and other horrors are found in it, and in general they are made from who knows what.
And a flood of imported sausage poured into Russia. However, it turned out to be somewhat strange, unusual and even - scary to think - completely tasteless, in any case, our consumers expected more from it.
As it turned out, high technology makes it possible to use not the best raw materials in sausage. Moreover, in the West, in general, it is not customary to use even first-grade meat for sausage; it is only sold for sale. Well, high-quality raw materials are incompatible with market relations! And it was foreigners who valued our sausages very highly, paying tribute to them when visiting the USSR.
And no wonder. After all, even the most popular and quite affordable boiled sausages Lyubitelskaya and Doctorskaya consisted of meat, and of the highest grade. That is, for 100 kg of top-grade boiled Lyubitelskaya sausage, 35 kg of top-grade trimmed beef, 40 kg of lean lean pork, and 25 kg of back fat were required.
Similarly, for 100 kg of Doctor's, 25 kg of premium beef, 70 kg of lean pork, 3 kg of eggs and 2 kg of cow's milk were consumed. Sausages with this composition were truly unique in quality and nutritional value! Unless, of course, some of the raw materials went “to the left”...
If you believe the statistics, until 1990 in the USSR there were more than 40 kg of sausage per person per year. It turns out to be a paradox! The Soviet Union, the world leader in sausage production per capita, never had it. Sometimes the above-mentioned one was instantly swept off the shelves, sometimes the sellers held it under threat of dismissal.
And after some time, when the fainting at the full foreign counters ended, the concept of “sausage emigration” was replaced by the concept of “sausage nostalgia.” And stories appeared about how some of the former compatriots allegedly established the production of “those” sausages according to “the same” recipes. And they allegedly had unprecedented success in the West, especially among their former compatriots.
And for those who still did not get such sausage, Russian relatives and friends from Russia brought domestic sausages as a gift. However, the Soviet sausage from childhood could not be returned; both the taste and the price became different. Or had those affected by the tsarist regime been cured by that time, and sausage as a healing remedy had lost its relevance, and therefore disappeared?
However, not only emigrants, but also Russian residents are nostalgic for Soviet-era sausages. And, as you know, it is Soviet brands that are bought most of all - Doctorskaya, Lyubitelskaya, Krakovskaya, Moskovskaya and, of course, Servelat.
The affordability of sausages reflected both the idea of equality and the secondary role of the peasantry, whose labor was so modestly paid. And cheap sausage made from high-quality meat disappeared simultaneously with the disappearance of the Soviet Union.
However, it did not completely disappear. After all, a modern GOST for sausages has been developed, preserving continuity with the previous, Soviet one. And although there is no “same” sausage and there cannot be, because everything changes - raw materials, technologies, packaging, Soviet brands live and prosper. But today, to buy Lyubitelskaya from Moskovskaya, you don’t have to go to other cities or stand in line at six o’clock in the morning.
Today, for most Russians, sausage is the number one meat product, although it is more of a snack than a meal. “Doctor’s” remains one of the most beloved and popular. Many enterprises produce sausage, and both according to GOST and TU - technical conditions developed at this enterprise. Therefore, on the shelves you can often find several types of “Doctorskaya”, and any other sausage, in different casings and at different prices.
Today, technical specifications (TS) are approved not by the Council of Ministers of Russia, but by the enterprise itself, which operates on the principle: less meat - more substitutes. From the point of view of product quality, the most hectic time is considered to be the early 90s, when competition for sales markets was life and death. It happened that we ate sausage... without sausage at all, that is, without meat! Manufacturers made a fat emulsion, added “flavor” - and it was done.
On great proletarian holidays, minced chicken was added to this “sausage.” Nowadays, the situation has not improved much - second-grade sausages are 70% (!) made up of soybeans and various chemical additives that have nothing to do with meat. Soybean absorbs moisture very well; 1 kg of such powder requires 5-6 liters of water.
We calculate: if up to 10 kg of soy is used for 100 kg of individual sausage, it means that up to 60 liters of water also goes there. Here's 70 kg out of 100 that are not meat at all! Carrageenan is also widely used: a vegetable protein based on seaweed. It is very moisture-intensive, and when mixed with water in the final product, it well retains the density of the product and its solidity.
Soviet sausage will always be remembered with nostalgia. Grandparents - that in the days of their youth it was real, made of meat. Their children - how difficult it was to get it in principle, and if it was possible, then the sandwich became a holiday. And how the coupons were sold. And today's youth are already accustomed to coming to the store and choosing sausage according to their taste and wallet.
Remember these sayings:
“In the year of Gagarin’s flight into space, not only meat disappeared from sale (more than half of it was previously provided by personal farms of collective farmers), but also sugar and cereals, and there were even shortages of bread.”
This entire program for building communism by 1980, even at the time of its adoption in the same fateful year of 1962, aroused deep skepticism and ridicule among the people like: “The meat has disappeared because we are moving towards communism with leaps and bounds, and the cattle cannot keep up with us.”
“Since the mid-1960s, meat has been disappearing from free sale in most parts of the country. From now on, it can only be bought in cooperative trade or on the collective farm market at a price significantly higher than the state price.”
What actually happened:
Consumption statistics show that meat and meat products were included in the diet of Soviet citizens, although in terms of consumption of these products they lagged behind the inhabitants of a number of Western countries. In 1984, the Soviet consumer ate 64 kg during the year. meat, USA - 108.2, UK - 69.5, Sweden - 57.7. In earlier periods of the “era of stagnation,” meat consumption was lower and the gap with Western countries was greater, but meat never completely disappeared from the diet of citizens.
Erroneous and exaggerated ideas about meat consumption in the USSR were formed under the influence of the specifics of its acquisition in trade. Meat in the USSR came to the table of citizens in five main ways:
1) Through the state store system(beef meat 1.90 - 2.20). In fact, only Moscow, Leningrad, the capitals of the union and autonomous republics, the army and some cities were supplied en masse with this method (at a beef price of 1.80-2.20 per kg, with average purchasing prices of 1985 being 2.52 rubles per meat in carcasses. That is, after delivery of cutting the liver and cutting, this meat should have cost three to three fifty rubles. One and a half rubles were actually subsidized to the price. And by 1990, the average purchase price in Russia was already 3 rubles 38 kopecks, that is, meat could not cost on sale for less than five rubles - and was already sold at three rubles per kilogram.) Therefore, the statement that this meat (at two rubles) “was not available anywhere else” is almost correct. But this is not all Soviet meat; it is a smaller part of it, according to some estimates - no more than a third of all meat consumed by the population of the USSR.
2) The bulk of the meat consumed by workers came through the canteen system at enterprises. (For reference, approximately 350,000 canteens operated in the USSR - one for every few hundred people of the population, (of which in Russia - 170,000). At the same time, over 20 million people could eat in the canteens.) They are often forgotten, but huge volumes of meat comparable to all volumes of state meat trade, including in the outback, where, according to myth, “there has never been meat at the state price.” Visitors to canteens regularly ate soup with meat and cutlet, azu or goulash at their place of work or study (among students, according to contemporaries, for some reason sausages were very popular). The usual price of lunch (first and second with meat) is from 40 up to 60 kopecks. For the minimum wage (70 rubles) it was possible to have a hearty meal 150 times - five times a day. However, it was also a fishing day. One per week. Everyone remembers and scolds him, forgetting that he was fish only because the rest of the days in the USSR were meat. [In addition to canteens, the USSR also had dumplings, and the dumplings also contained real meat.]
3) Through the cooperative trading system(beef meat 3.00 - 3.50 per kg, semi-smoked sausage - six). IN rural areas and in small towns, the cooptorg system was the main one that supplied the population with meat (after the canteens). As a rule, there were no queues there, even in the late 80s.
4) Through the system of collective farm markets. (In 1985, 8,088 collective farm markets were constantly operating in the USSR, with one and a half million trading places. And they were not empty.) In large and medium-sized cities, markets were open daily, in small ones - on weekends, usually in the morning. Prices throughout the country fluctuated greatly: from the cooperative level of 3-3.50 in the outback, to five rubles in large cities, and up to ten in large markets in Moscow (Central, Cheryomushkinsky, etc.). However, Muscovites also had access to peripheral markets on the outskirts of the city.
5) Own production- of course in the countryside. Few collective farmers had a pig, or even two, to fatten. Over the summer, a piglet grows to 100-120 kg of live weight. This can explain that in the villages there was never any meat in stores. However, in the spring there was always a trade in live chickens at the markets for the townspeople. In many places (according to the testimony of contemporaries, especially in the Russian south and the North Caucasus, on the server no matter who the less), people always raised two to three dozen chickens on the ground during the summer in their dachas. Sometimes geese (if there is a reservoir).
We do not take into account such things as hunting, although there are regions (North, rural Siberia) where this was the main source, not since the times of Soviet power, but from eternity - as a tradition of the local population. However, the father of one of the authors of the article, although a native Muscovite, was an avid hunter, regularly bringing home hefty parts of the carcasses of wild boars, elk, not to mention all sorts of ducks, black grouse and hazel grouse - they were not considered food at all. Yes, pampering.
This is roughly how the meat balance in the USSR developed. All Soviet statistics on the sale of meat to the population is the sum of three lines: state, cooperative trade and catering. So in 1985, 12 million 359 thousand tons of meat were sold through these three channels - that is, with a population of 272 million people, 45 kg of meat per capita. Those who like to talk about Soviet statistics would be better off shutting up here, since for every kilogram sold, the trading organization was obliged to hand over a coin to the cash register. According to contemporaries, through the co-op. At that time, significant volumes of “left”, unaccounted for meat were processed in trade, and the profits were put in one’s pocket. That is, the figure 45 is underestimated. It also does not include market trade or own production, nor hunting.
But the state statistics of meat consumption by the population also included the population’s own meat production. That is why the figure for meat consumption in the same 1985 was not 45, but 62 kilograms per capita on average in the USSR.
Meat consumption by the population of the Russian Federation in 2000 fell to a historical low of 41 kilograms per capita. Currently, it is about fifty kilograms per capita per year, of which only about 35 kilograms are produced in the country, and the rest is purchased abroad.
Result: The USSR had meat, there was a lot of it, there was more of it than now, and the “average worker” received it, and not only in Moscow. Average meat consumption was 60 (75 in the late 80s), of which the USSR imported about 2 kg (but exported 10 kg of fish). This is seriously more than 54 kg in 2007 (of which ~10 kg were imported).
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