My colleague and I decided to make a list of dishes that were the "sacred cows" of our childhood feast. But not just like that, but to track how this list has changed - firstly, in time, and, secondly, geographically.
True, they faced the fact that they are still very limited precisely by the time frame - that I, that she was born in the second half of the seventies and her own our memories begin somewhere in the mid-eighties (those that you can fully believe, and not suspect that they are acquired from stories and completed imagination).
Our parents' memories (cumulative) span from the early fifties (her mother was 43 years old).
Something is known from the stories of grandmothers and grandfathers, but these are already legends of deep antiquity.
But the geography is more interesting - her family has traveled to many regions of the USSR. They lived in Chimkent, Semipalatinsk, Bukhara, Novosibirsk, Dnepropetrovsk, and already at the end, just before the collapse of the USSR, they settled in Russia - in the Yaroslavl region. For my part, I know the cuisine of central Russia well (I had a chance to travel with my parents), Moscow, Belarus.
Therefore, our geography is limited.
And here's what we got.
Salads
Now many people believe that "Olivier", "Mimosa", "Herring under a fur coat" are salads that were in Russia and the USSR almost from the very beginning. The spread of this belief is facilitated by the fact that "Olivier", albeit in a completely different composition was present at the tables of the times of tsarist Russia, and "Herring under a fur coat" is considered a dish born revolution.
In fact, everything is a little bit different.
the main post-war salad of Soviet feasts... vinaigrette. cheap, cheerful, the simplest ingredients that absolutely everyone could afford, even in the village.
- My grandmother hated vinaigrette, - recalled a colleague. - We never cooked it, simply because my grandmother said she ate too much of it after the war, since all the vegetables came from their own garden, and this was one of the most accessible dishes.
Herring under a fur coat in the form we are accustomed to, "Olivier", "Mimosa" and other huge number of salads, which are now considered to be cult and signs of the Soviet feast, appeared in the sixties.
It was at this time that industrial mayonnaise became massively available. The wider the geography of its production became, the more the familiar cuisine changed.
And yes, since then they have been on almost every table, in different variations.
Hot
Here, too, everything is not so simple. The so-called meat in French is again a product of the sixties or even the seventies of the twentieth century.
But before him ...
Almost everywhere, boiled potatoes with a lot of butter and something meat were served hot.
Most often, poultry, baked or fried whole, acted as a meat dish.
A little less often - natural meat, and most often it was fried in portions, small, and not whole ham or something else was baked.
Very often... cutlets appeared on the festive table. Mountain on a common dish, so that each guest can take a cutlet himself.
Dumplings were also considered a festive, almost a banquet dish.
However, the years in the sixties, closer to the seventies, when the welfare grew a little, and “The Book of Tasty and healthy food "and other culinary collections went to cities, there was an interpenetration of national dishes kitchens.
So in Novosibirsk (we celebrate Novosibirsk, because, let me remind you, a colleague's family lived there at one time), it has become fashionable to serve pilaf on the festive table.
And also dumplings are often replaced with manti. By the way, manti at festive feasts have since taken root well - almost on a par with French meat. In Moscow and the Moscow region - that's right. Both in our family and in the families of friends, they have long been a symbol of a festive feast.
Here's another nuance that a colleague noted, already in her memory: after moving from Ukraine (rather well-fed republics) to Russia (to the Yaroslavl region), noticed - very often there were sausages on the festive tables and stewed cabbage. Everyday dish.
I don't remember anything like that, but I'm inclined to think that this perdimonocle depended on the level of provision of the regions.
I will leave snacks and pastries for tomorrow (and so it turned out too many letters)
Let me remind you: all these are exclusively subjective conclusions based on memories and concerning the places where relatives lived, who were able to tell about the past and we ourselves were.
Therefore, if you tell us about something else - thank you in advance!
It's interesting to make a complete picture ...