A separate section in Russian cuisine that has not changed for centuries is numerous preparations. In many regions of Russia there was cold weather for nine months of the year. Due to weather conditions, housewives tried to prepare as much food as possible for future use. They used different methods of preserving food: salting, smoking, soaking, fermentation. Cabbage soup was prepared from sauerkraut or pickled cabbage and added to porridge and pies. Pickled apples were also actively used as treats or additions to main dishes. Pickles have become ingredients in many traditional Russian recipes. And salted or dried meat and fish were served when the fast ended.

Festive Russian dishes

Russian cuisine combined ritual and practical functions. For the holidays, certain dishes were prepared, each of which had its own meaning. In poor families, some ingredients were replaced with cheap ones, but the meaning was not lost. The main holidays were Christmas, Maslenitsa, Easter, weddings, and birthdays.

Traditional Russian food

Every nation has authentic dishes that every tourist recommends trying. Food in Russia is an acquaintance with the way of life of the people and immersion in traditions. Not all Russian dishes that were prepared five hundred years ago can be tasted now. But some of the recipes are still popular and show the diversity of Russian cuisine.
Traditional Russian recipes:

Topic: Traditional Dishes of Russian Cuisine

Topic: Traditional Russian cuisine

Russia is the world’s largest country, so if differs greatly from region to region. The same can be said about Russian national cuisine, which is rather varied and based on different cultural and historic traditions. Usually any national cuisine is formed under the influence of two main factors: religion, which prescribes eating certain kinds of food, and climate, which determines the availability of various vegetables, fruit, meat and fish products. Orthodoxy, which has traditionally been an official religion in Russia, doesn’t forbid any food. But long fasts prescribing abstinence from meat and other types of animal source food, explain why Russian cuisine includes many vegetarian dishes. And long severe Russian winters help to understand why hot fatty soups and broths are so popular in this country.

Russia is the largest country in the world, so its different regions are very different from each other. The same can be said about Russian national cuisine, which is very diverse and based on different cultural and historical traditions. Typically, any national cuisine is formed under the influence of two main factors: religion, which prescribes the consumption of certain types of food, and climate, which determines the availability of various types of vegetables, fruits, meat and fish products. Orthodoxy, which has traditionally been the official religion in Russia, does not prohibit any food. However, the long fasts, which prescribe abstinence from meat and other animal products, explain why Russian cuisine includes many vegetarian dishes. And the long, harsh Russian winters help us understand why hot, rich soups and broths are so popular in this country.

The most popular Russian soups, which are well-known all over the world, are borshch, shchi, and the cold summer soup okroshka. There are a lot of regional recipes for these dishes, but traditionally, both borshch and shchi are and are served hot with sour-cream and rye bread. Sometimes, for example, during a religious fast, meat can be substituted by fish or mushrooms. Borshch is always cooked with beet-root, which gives it a saturated red color, and shchi must be based on fresh or sour cabbage. As for okroshka, it is mainly cooked in summer. It is a cold soup, where instead of meat broth kvass is used. It contains cold meat (usually beef), boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, cucumbers and green onion. All the ingredients are chopped and mixed. Okroshka is usually served with sour-cream, mustard and horseradish.

The most popular Russian soups, which are well known all over the world, are borscht, cabbage soup and the cold summer soup okroshka. There are many regional recipes for these dishes, but traditionally both borscht and cabbage soup are cooked in strong meat or bone broth and served hot with sour cream and rye bread. Sometimes, for example, during religious fasting, meat can be replaced with fish or mushrooms. Borscht is always prepared with the addition of beets, which gives it a rich red color, and the base of the cabbage soup should be fresh or sauerkraut. As for okroshka, it is prepared mainly in the summer. This is a cold soup where kvass is used instead of meat broth. It contains cold meat (usually beef), boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, cucumbers and green onions. All ingredients are finely chopped and mixed. Okroshka is usually served with sour cream, mustard and horseradish.

Pelmeni is one more famous Russian dish. Small balls from minced meat are wrapped into dough made of flour and eggs and then boiled in salted water usually with bay leaves. Pelmeni can be served with sour-cream, table vinegar or horseradish. The filling can be made of any sort of meat – pork, beef, lamb or chicken. a mixed minced meat, for example, pork and beef, or pork, beef and lamb. A vegetarian analogue of pelmeni is vareniki, which is more popular in Ukraine. Fillings for vareniki can be made of cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, mushrooms, berries and so on.

Pelmeni is another famous Russian dish. Small balls of minced meat are wrapped in an unleavened dough of flour and eggs and then boiled in salted water, usually with the addition of a bay leaf. Dumplings can be served with sour cream, vinegar or horseradish. The filling can be prepared from any type of meat - pork, beef, lamb or chicken. However, the best dumplings contain mixed minced meat, such as pork and beef or pork, beef and lamb. A vegetarian analogue of dumplings is varenyky, which is more popular in Ukraine. The filling for dumplings can be made from cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, mushrooms, berries, and so on.

The most popular Russian national salads are vinegret, Olivier salad (abroad it is sometimes called Russian salad), and “dressed herring”. Vinegret is a purely vegetarian salad, which is cooked from chopped boiled vegetables (beetroot, potatoes, carrots), fresh or sour cabbage, pickled cucumbers and onion. Olivier and herring salads are mayonnaise-based and rather substantial. The first one is cooked from boiled vegetables, eggs and boiled meat (which nowadays is often substituted with sausages), and the second one is a layered salad made of pickle herring, boiled potatoes, carrots, beetroots and eggs. Sometimes the herring salad also contains apples.

The most popular Russian national salads are vinaigrette, Olivier (abroad it is often called “Russian salad”) and “herring under a fur coat.” Vinaigrette is a purely vegetarian salad that is prepared from finely chopped boiled vegetables (beets, potatoes, carrots), fresh or sauerkraut, pickles and onions. It is seasoned with vegetable oil. Olivier and “herring” are mayonnaise-based and very filling salads. The first is made from boiled vegetables, eggs and boiled meat (which these days is often replaced with sausage), and the second is a layered salad of salted herring, boiled potatoes, carrots, beets and eggs. Sometimes herring salad also contains apples.

Of course, as blini should not be left unmentioned. of cooking and filling, blini can serve as a dessert or an appetizer. Blini are made of batter, which is poured on a hot frying pan and fried. Blini can be cooked of wheat, rye, oat, or buckwheat flour. They are served with run butter, sour cream, caviar, vinegar pickled mushrooms, berries or jam. Traditionally, blini have been cooked during the Maslenitsa festival,

“Oh, Lightly bright and beautifully decorated Russian land! You are famous for many beauties: you are famous for many lakes, locally revered rivers and springs, mountains, steep hills, high oak forests, clean fields, wondrous animals, various birds, countless great cities, glorious villages, monastery gardens, temples of God...,- wrote the ancient chronicler. - You are filled with everything, Russian land!..”

Here, in the vast expanses - from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Baltic Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, Russians live next to other peoples - a nation united in language, culture and way of life.
An integral part of the culture of every nation is cuisine. It is not without reason that ethnographers begin their study of the life of any people by studying their cuisine, for it reflects in a concentrated form the history, life and customs of the people. Russian cuisine in this sense is no exception; it is also part of our culture, our history.

The first meager information about Russian cuisine are contained in chronicles - the oldest written sources of the X-XV centuries. Old Russian cuisine began to take shape in the 9th century and reached its peak by the 15th century. Naturally, the formation of Russian cuisine was primarily influenced by natural and geographical conditions. The abundance of rivers, lakes, and forests contributed to the appearance in Russian cuisine of a large number of dishes from fish, game, mushrooms, and wild berries.

It is rightly believed that by sowing a field, growing and harvesting grain, a person first acquired his homeland. Since time immemorial, Russians have grown rye, oats, wheat, barley, millet, and buckwheat on their lands. Cereal porridges were cooked from them: oatmeal, buckwheat, spelled, rye... Porridge was and remains our national dish. It accompanies a Russian person throughout his life: small children are fed semolina porridge cooked in milk, adults love buckwheat porridge, kutia* is a funeral dish.

Porridge is considered the “foremother” of bread. “Porridge is our mother, and rye bread is our dear father,” says a Russian folk proverb.

It has been known in Rus' since time immemorial fresh and sour dough. From simple unleavened dough they made carols, sochni, and later noodles, dumplings, and dumplings. Black rye bread was baked from sour yeast dough, without which the Russian table is unthinkable to this day. By the 10th century, wheat flour appeared, and the range of baked goods increased sharply, loaves, rolls, kovrigs, pies, pancakes, pancakes and other baked goods appeared.

Among the most ancient foods are Russian oatmeal, rye, and wheat. jelly. They are at least 1000 years old. The story of how jelly saved the city is recorded in the chronicle known as “The Tale of Bygone Years.” This is what the chronicler Nestor told about.

The 10th century in Rus' turned out to be difficult: there was a great continuous war with nomadic tribes who made constant raids on Russian lands. One day the Pechenegs besieged Belgorod. The siege lasted for a long time, and severe famine began in the city. Then a people's council gathered, and the townspeople decided: it was better to surrender to the Pechenegs than for everyone to die of hunger. But one elder said: “Don’t give up for three more days and do what I tell you.” The elder ordered to collect the remains of oats, wheat and bran from all over the city, prepare a casser** from them for cooking jelly, and look for honey and make a sweet meal from it***. Then he ordered to dig two wells and place tubs in them level with the ground. A jelly solution was poured into the first tub, and a honey drink into the second. The next day, the townspeople invited several Pechenegs and led them to the wells. They drew a bucket from the first well, cooked jelly, began to eat it themselves, and washed it down with a honey drink from the second well and treated it to the Pechenegs. They marveled and decided that the land itself fed the Russians. Having returned, the Pechenegs told their princes everything that had happened, they lifted the siege and went home from the city.

Nowadays, grain jelly is almost forgotten. They were replaced by starch-based berry jelly, which appeared almost 900 years later than cereals.

By the 10th century, turnips, cabbage, radishes, peas, and cucumbers were already common in Rus'. They were eaten raw, steamed, boiled, baked, salted, and pickled. Potatoes became widespread in Russia only in the 18th century, and tomatoes in the 19th century. Until the beginning of the 19th century, there were almost no salads in Russian cuisine. The first salads were made from one vegetable, so they were called cabbage, cucumber or potato salad. Later, the recipe for salads became more complicated, they began to be made from different vegetables, meat and fish were added, and new names appeared: “Spring”, “Health”, “Sea Pearl” and others.

Liquid hot dishes, they were then called brew, or bread, appeared in Rus' also in the ancient period: first fish soup, cabbage soup, stews, zatirukhi, mash, later borscht, kalia, pickles, then solyanka. In the 19th century, liquid hot dishes received a common name - soups.

Among the drinks, kvass, honey, all kinds of decoctions from forest herbs, as well as sbitn**** were common. Spices, and in large quantities, have been used in Rus' since the 11th century. Russian and overseas merchants brought cloves, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, saffron, coriander, bay leaves, black pepper, olive oil, or, as it was then called, wood oil, lemons, etc. It must be recalled that Rus' conducted extensive trade: in the west with the Varangians and Germans, in the south with the Greeks and Danube Bulgarians, in the east with Asian peoples. The Great Water Route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” and the Great Silk Road ran through Ancient Rus'.

Tea first appeared in Russia in the 17th century. As for alcoholic drinks, in Ancient Rus' they drank low-alcohol ones - fermented honey and fermented berry juices. Vodka was first brought to Russia in the 15th century, but was immediately banned from import and appeared again under Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the 16th century, at which time the first “tsar’s tavern” was opened.

The originality of dishes of Russian national cuisine was determined not only by the set of products from which the food was prepared, but also by the peculiarities of their preparation in a Russian oven. Initially, Russian stoves were made without a chimney and heated “black”. Later, stoves with pipes appeared, and then stoves began to be added to the stoves and ovens were built into them. In the Russian stove they cooked food, baked bread, brewed kvass and beer, and dried food supplies on the stove. The stove heated the home, old people and children slept on the stove, and in some areas they steamed in the large firebox of the Russian stove, as if in a bathhouse.

The food cooked in a Russian oven had excellent taste. This was facilitated by the shape of the dishes, temperature conditions and uniform heating on all sides. In the Russian oven, food was cooked in clay pots and cast iron pots. Both had a narrow neck, a small bottom and large convex sides. The narrow neck reduced evaporation and contact with air, thereby promoting better preservation of vitamins, nutrients and aromatic substances. Food in a Russian oven was cooked almost without boiling due to the fact that the temperature in the oven gradually decreased, because the oven was first heated and then cooked in it. Thus, the food in the Russian oven steamed more or, as they used to say, simmered. Therefore, porridge, pea soups, and sauerkraut cabbage soup turned out to be especially tasty.

The Russian stove, having served faithfully for at least 3,000 years, has now completely disappeared from urban life and is gradually leaving rural homes. It was replaced by gas and electric stoves, electric grills, and microwave ovens. Dishes cooked in the oven in ceramic dishes under a dough lid largely retain the taste and aroma of ancient Russian cuisine.
In ancient times, the cuisine of the upper class was not much different from the cuisine of the common people. By the 17th century, the food of the royal family, as well as the privileged classes, became more and more sophisticated, differing not only in quantity, but also in composition and method of serving dishes. It should be noted, however, that this applied primarily to the festive, ceremonial table. During fasting days, the royal cuisine still retained its common folk features.

The royal feasts were particularly pompous, pompous and abundant in food. The number of dishes on them reached 150-200, both the size of the dishes and the duration of the feast increased: as a rule, it began with lunch and lasted until late at night.

This is how A.K. Tolstoy describes the feast organized by Ivan the Terrible for 700 guardsmen in the novel “Prince Silver”.

“Many servants, in violet-colored velvet caftans with gold embroidery, stood in front of the sovereign, bowed to him at the waist and, two in a row, went for food. Soon they returned, carrying two hundred roasted swans on golden platters...
The fun had been going on for more than four hours, and there was only half a table. The royal cooks distinguished themselves on this day. They have never been so successful with lemon kalia, spun kidneys and crucian carp with lamb. Particular surprise was aroused by the gigantic fish caught in the Cold Sea and sent to Sloboda from the Solovetsky Monastery. They were brought alive, in huge barrels; the journey lasted several weeks. These fish barely fit on the silver and gold basins, which were brought into the dining room by several people at once. The intricate art of the chefs was shown here in full splendor. The sturgeons and shevrigs were so cut and placed on dishes that they looked like roosters with outstretched wings, like winged serpents with gaping jaws. The hares in noodles were also good and tasty, and the guests, no matter how busy they were, did not miss either the quails with garlic sauce, or the larks with onions and saffron. But, at a sign from the steward, they removed salt, pepper and vinegar from the tables and removed all the meat and fish dishes. The servants went out two abreast and returned in new attire. They replaced the brocade dolmans with summer kuntushkas made of white axamite with silver embroidery and sable trim. These clothes were even more beautiful and richer than the first two. Cleaned up in this way, they brought the sugar kremlin, weighing five pounds, into the chamber and placed it on the royal table. This Kremlin was cast very skillfully. The battlements and towers, and even the men on foot and on horseback, were carefully finished. Similar kremlins, but smaller ones, about three pounds, no more, decorated other tables. Following the Kremlins, they brought in about a hundred gilded and painted trees, on which gingerbread, gingerbread and sweet pies hung instead of fruit. At the same time, lions, eagles and all sorts of birds cast from sugar appeared on the tables. Between the cities and the birds rose piles of apples, berries and Volosh nuts. But no one touched the fruits anymore; everyone was full. Some finished their cups of romanea, more out of decency than from thirst, others dozed with their elbows on the table; many were lying under the benches, everyone, without exception, had loosened their belts and unbuttoned their caftans.”

The 18th century in Russia was marked by a new stage in the development of Russian society. Peter I not only moved the capital closer to Western Europe and changed the calendar, but also forced many customs to change.
Starting from the times of Peter the Great, Russian cuisine began to develop under significant influenced by Western European cooking, first German and Dutch, and later French.

The Russian nobility began to “sign up” foreign cooks, who completely replaced Russian cooks among the upper class. The stove, along with pots, baking trays, and skimmers, was adopted from our western neighbors. The Russian table was replenished with sandwiches, salads, pates and broths, the range of dishes fried in frying pans expanded (steaks, entrecotes, languettes, cutlets), exquisite sauces, jellies, creams, mousses, etc. appeared. Many native Russian dishes began to be called in French manners, for example, the well-known Russian appetizer of boiled potatoes and beets with pickles began to be called vinaigrette from the French vinaigrette - vinegar. The usual Russian taverns with sex workers were replaced by restaurants with head waiters and waiters. All these innovations were introduced into folk cuisine very slowly, and many newfangled influences practically did not affect the diet of the common people.

It should be noted that over the centuries, along with original dishes, much has been borrowed from neighbors. Thus, it is believed that grain processing and yeast dough came to us from the Scythians and from the Greek colonies of the Black Sea region; rice, buckwheat, spices and wine - from Byzantium; tea, lemons, dumplings - from eastern neighbors; borscht and cabbage rolls - from the Western Slavs. Naturally, once on Russian soil, foreign dishes assimilated with Russian culinary traditions and acquired a Russian flavor. The desire to cleanse Russian cuisine of foreign influences is as pointless as an attempt to cleanse the Russian language of words of foreign origin.

The dispute about the purity of Russian national traditions and the purity of the Russian language has long roots. In the 18th century, Russian writers V.K. Trediakovsky and A.P. Sumarokov greeted with indignation the appearance of the word soup in the Russian language. Sumarokov wrote:

“It seems brainless, the Russian language is stupid: Is the stew tasty, or is the soup tasty?”

Time has passed, and now no one objects to soup, but new, more recent borrowings, such as cocktails, raise objections. Of course, you can replace the word cocktail with the words dessert drink, but our young people go to bars, go to parties and drink these same cocktails! And this is everywhere in the urban environment - from Novgorod to Vladivostok.

The issue of foreign influences and borrowings has been and remains the most controversial both in Russian history in general and in the history of Russian cuisine in particular. It is appropriate to quote the words of Academician D. S. Likhachev: “Russian culture is an open culture, a kind and courageous culture, accepting everything and creatively comprehending everything.”

Had a great influence on the entire Russian way of life, including Russian cuisine. adoption of Christianity. With the spread of Christianity in Rus', there was a sharp division of the Russian table into Lenten and non-Lenten, that is, modest. Observance of fasts from 196 to 212 days a year (in different ways in different years) led to a wide variety of flour, vegetable, mushroom and fish dishes. During fasts it was forbidden to have too much fun, eat meat and dairy foods, eggs and sugar, and during strict fasts it was forbidden to eat fish. The fasts were multi-day - Lent, Christmas, Epiphany and others, as well as one-day ones - on Wednesdays and Fridays.

After the fasts, holidays came, the days of the meat eater, and then the fast table was replaced by a fast one. There were many holidays - from 174 to 190 a year. We can say that life in Russia was a necklace of holidays.

The abundance of meat and dairy food depended entirely on the diligence and diligence of the peasant. At the beginning of the century, meat, poultry, fish, and game were transported to St. Petersburg and Moscow by carts. The festive table was mostly rich and plentiful. Abundance, as the Russian historian I.N. Boltin wrote at the end of the 18th century, is one of the characteristic features of the Russian table. For the holidays, all kinds of pies were prepared, pancakes were baked, jellies were cooked, pigs, geese and ducks were fried.

The Old Russian meat table was distinguished by the preparation of dishes from a whole carcass of a bird or animal, or a large piece of meat. Shredded meat was used mainly for filling pies or stuffing geese, chickens, lamb and pork legs, and cauliflowers. Later, under the influence of Western European cuisine, the Russian table became even more diverse.

The famous writer I. S. Shmelev in the novel “The Summer of the Lord” describes the Lenten and fast table at the name day in his father’s house: “On the Lenten section of the table... eight excellent courses were served: broth on a live ruff, with sterlet pies, steamed sterlet - “overlord’s”, fish croquettes with grainy caviar, burbot fish soup, three kulebyaki “on four corners” - and with fresh porcini mushrooms, and with elm in pike-perch caviar, and salmon “telelnoe”, and vol-au-vent-ograté, with rice sauce and caviar bake; and sturgeon aspic, and fluffy beluga cutlets of the highest selection, with mushroom sauce with capers and olives, with lemon; and steamed whitefish with a garnish of crayfish necks; and nut cake, and almond cream, doused with perfumed rum, and some kind of pineapple maseduvan, in cherries and golden peaches.
...And the skormniks were also richly served. Kulebyaki, croquettes, pies; two hot ones - soup with goose giblets and rassolnik; hazel grouse aspic, selected Arsentich ham, from Sunduchny Ryad, famous throughout Moscow, in green Rostov milk peas; fried goose under apples, with shredded red cabbage, with ruddy hollow potatoes - “Pushkin”, chicken, “pozharsky” - cutlets on the bones in openwork; pineapple, “Kurievskaya”, porridge, in creamy foam and nut-fruit pastry, ice cream in champagne.”

The abundance of the Russian table should not be confused with gluttony. First of all abundance of Russian table was associated with hospitality - a national trait of the Russian people, inherent, of course, in many other peoples. Gluttony, the quality of eating in excess, was widely and greedily considered a vice. About a person who does not know how to eat, people said with condemnation: “There is no howl in him.”
Speaking about Russian cuisine in general, it is necessary to dwell on its regional characteristics. They are explained primarily by the difference in natural zones and the associated diversity of animal and plant products.
Regional features were also formed under the influence of neighboring peoples. Therefore, the cuisine of Novgorodians, Muscovites, Siberians-Uralians, Don and Terek Cossacks, and White Sea Pomors was quite different from one another. Much of what was well known and familiar in one area remained practically unknown outside it.

The turbulent events of the 20th century, which entailed population migration, the development and widespread introduction of mass media, and the emergence of a public catering system with unified “Collections of Recipes,” largely smoothed out regional characteristics, but to a certain extent also enriched the national Russian cuisine. Nevertheless, in Novgorod and Pskov they still cook cabbage soup with smelt, on the Don - fish soup with tomatoes, in the North they eat venison, and in Siberia - stroganina*****.

Russian cuisine has come a long way in its development. Along this path there were periods of formation, improvement and prosperity, but there were also periods of decline, there were bright original finds, successful borrowings, but also offensive losses.

SNACKS

A distinctive feature of Russian cuisine is the abundance and variety of snacks. When guests arrive, both in former times and now, it is customary for us to serve all kinds of pickles on the table: sauerkraut, pickled apples, pickled mushrooms, cucumbers, herring. In a hospitable home, the owners greet guests at the doorstep and immediately invite them to a pre-set table.
All kinds of salads occupy their permanent place on both the festive and everyday tables. In recent years, cocktail salads have appeared as snacks in restaurants and cafes, the characteristic feature of which is the careful grinding of all components. This is the most important condition that determines the taste of the salad and the way it is served. Cocktail salads are served in glass, crystal glasses or bowls with a teaspoon. They are easy to prepare, piquant in taste and bring a certain novelty to the use of familiar products. These qualities make cocktail salads quite suitable for the home table.
Before preparing any salads, the products must be cooled.
Hot snacks are rarer not only in home cuisine, but also in restaurant cuisine. The best of them migrated to the category of second courses. The exceptions are boiled potatoes with butter and julienne, which came to us from French cuisine. Meanwhile, hot snacks are the best snacks for strong drinks.
The taste of snacks largely depends on sauces and gravies, that is, on what they are seasoned with. The same dish, seasoned differently, is perceived differently.
Since ancient times, snacks, like other dishes, have been decorated, or, as they say, decorated. Decoration is, of course, a matter of taste, but there is one immutable rule: it should be decorated with the products that are part of the dish. The only exception is greens and sometimes berries. In general, you need to decorate in such a way that your mouth waters, so that just the sight of the dish immediately whets your appetite!

NOTES

* Kutia or kutia - porridge with raisins, honey infusion, made from barley, wheat or rice, brought to church during a funeral service and served at the funeral table, and in some areas on Christmas Eve.

** Tsezh is a jelly solution.

*** Full - honey infusion, boiled honey on water.

**** Sbiten is a hot drink made with honey and spices.

***** Stroganina is fresh frozen fish that is eaten without prior heat treatment

When we organize a feast in the Russian style or go to a Russian restaurant, the menu will definitely include pickled cucumbers, sauerkraut, pickled mushrooms, for the first course - daily cabbage soup, Moscow borscht and fish soup, delicacies - sturgeon, red and black caviar, game. Siberian dumplings, boiled potatoes, Guryev porridge, pancakes... Which of these did our ancestors actually eat?

Cabbage soup and porridge are our food.

The usual food of Russian peasants was not very varied. You need to cook quickly and satisfyingly, using what you have grown with your own hands or collected from the forest. They ate little meat, although from time immemorial they raised chickens, geese, cows, goats and pigs.
Our ancestors called cabbage soup any soup, not just with cabbage, as it is now. Turnips, cabbage, and beets were grown in the gardens. All this could be boiled in water or meat broth, whitened with milk or sour cream - that’s the whole recipe. In spring, sorrel or young nettles were used. To make it “richer,” they added “stuffing” made from fried lard, and during Lent they seasoned food with hemp oil. In the 16th century you could try “shti borschovy”, “shti cabbage”, “shti repyany”.
They often ate tyyuryu - bread crumbled into kvass, milk or water in small pieces. They could also add greens there and season it all with vegetable oil. It did not require fire to prepare it, so it could be made right in the field, where the peasants went to work for the whole day. Moreover, in the summer heat, such food does not make you sleepy. Today's okroshka comes from turi.
But borscht was first called a stew made from hogweed (not the kind that can get burned). Then they began to cook it with beet kvass: they heated it in a pot, threw chopped beets, carrots, and cabbage into boiling water and sent it to simmer in the oven.
The highest calorie content in the diet was porridge. Them in the 16th century. there were more than 20 species. Different grains and different degrees of grinding made it possible to cook something new. Just as with cabbage soup, our ancestors did not bother themselves and used the word “porridge” to call any thick brew made from chopped ingredients.
Different porridges were popular in different provinces. For example, in Tambovskaya there was most millet. Not only was it used to make porridge with water or milk, but also kulesh with lard. In the Novgorod, Tver, and Pskov provinces they prepared gushka - thick barley porridge from whole grains.
Porridge has become an integral part of many holidays, rites and rituals. It was fed to young people at weddings and to workers after doing collective work. “Babka’s” porridge was used to greet newborns, “victorious” was used to celebrate military successes, “peaceful” was used to seal the truce, and kutia was used to commemorate the deceased.

Bread on the table - and the table is a throne, but not a piece of bread - and the table is a board

We ate a lot of bread. The peasants baked it from rye flour. Since this process is labor-intensive, we started it once a week. The finished product was then stored in special wooden bread bins.
For the peasant, bread was so important that without it, hunger would begin, even if there was plenty of other food. In lean years, quinoa, bran, tree bark, and ground acorns were added to the dough.
Bread was also an attribute of many rituals. We greeted dear guests with “bread and salt”, took communion with prosphora, broke the fast with Easter cakes at Easter, said farewell to the winter with pancakes at Maslenitsa, and greeted spring with “larks”.
Not only bread was baked from flour. Pancakes, pancakes, gingerbread, rolls, and cheesecakes often appeared on the table. In the old days, pancakes were made from buckwheat flour, loose, fluffy, and sour. There were a great variety of pies, they were served with certain dishes: with buckwheat porridge - with fresh cabbage soup, with sour - with salted fish, with meat - with noodles, with carrots - with fish soup.
In the seventeenth century. there were at least 50 recipes for pies. They differed in the type of dough: yeast, puff pastry, unleavened; baking method: spun in oil, hearth. The sizes and shapes changed (round, square, triangular, elongated), the way the filling was placed (open - pies) and closed. The filling could be: meat, fish, eggs, porridge, fruits, vegetables, berries, mushrooms, raisins, poppy seeds, peas, cottage cheese, chopped herbs.

Good appetizer - sauerkraut

Winter in Rus' is long and harsh, which is why all kinds of pickles were so popular. Cabbage was fermented in barrels, apples, cranberries, and lingonberries were added to it. Apples and cranberries were also soaked. When cucumbers appeared, they began to use them.
Mushrooms were especially revered. Milk mushrooms, saffron milk caps, chanterelles, honey mushrooms, trumpet mushrooms – each region has its own. Some species, such as white and boletus, were dried more.
The berries were dried or mixed with honey for storage. There were also preparations in the oven, for example, raspberries could be laid out in an even layer on a leaf of cabbage and sent into the cooling oven. The berries reached the desired condition, and the dried leaf was then removed from the resulting cake.

Potatoes and dumplings

Potatoes came to Russia only in the 18th century through the efforts of Peter I and did not immediately become the “second bread”. But when they tried it, they began to grow it with pleasure, and gradually it replaced turnips from the diet. Thanks to potatoes, it became easier to survive the crop failures of wheat and rye.
Dumplings got into Russian cuisine presumably because of the Urals. There is no mention of them in any Russian cookbook until the beginning of the 19th century. The earliest description of such a dish is found in “Painting of Royal Dishes” (1610-1613), which mentions manti with lamb.
Back in 1817, dumplings were exotic in the European part of Russia, although they were common in Siberia. There they were sculpted in huge quantities and stored in the cold in winter. In 1837, Ekaterina Avdeeva wrote about “dumplings” as a word in use in Siberia, that in Russia they are called “ears”, which are made from pasta dough with chopped beef, also with mushrooms or fish.