It is very funny to read that the Soviet cuisine was "boring", "inexpressive", devoid of bright notes. In fact, the menu of any person, then and now, depended not only on the filling of stores, but also on the desire to “eat something tastier”.
Someone in life ate fried potatoes and sticky pasta boiled into a lump. Someone from the same potatoes cooked potatoes stewed in cream - such that you will lick your fingers. Someone naval-style pasta turned into something indigestible. From someone with a set of the same ingredients, they learned real yummy.
This I mean that you have to love and know how to cook - then the food will not be boring. As for the culinary traditions... As far as I remember, they tried to popularize the cuisines of different republics on the territory of the Union, to create a kind of "Soviet fusion".
But the people themselves were very opposed to this. Not all, but many.
Now few people remember, but earlier there were quite a lot of different sauces on store shelves. But they passed by without touching them. Someone did not taste good, someone - unusual. One of the neighbors, throwing out the jar, it seems, of "Lyubitelskiy Ostoy" complained to my grandmother - what disgusting our industry is doing! It would be better if they produced ketchup, here is ketchup, yes ...
And in "Lyubitelsky Ostrom", by the way, there were fruits, a lot of spices and spices, wine... It was a very interesting (now if you look at the recipe) sauce. The bottom line was later, already in the early nineties, in stores appeared Chinese sauce "Ankle bens" (Chinese - in the sense of Chinese, not made in China), bamboo splices. And those who turned up their nose from the Soviet spicy-fruit sauce, this "Unlk Bens" was even praised. Still - from a beautiful capitalist life ...
Another very interesting sauce from those times was "Yuzhny". It just belonged to the group of derivatives from soy sauce (I repeat once again - I don't remember pure soy sauce, but there were quite a few derivatives from it).
He had a very interesting combination of ingredients - soy sauce in the company of soy extraction (codenamed "enzymatic extraction"), apple puree, raisins, tomato paste, many herbs and spices, which gave a very interesting piquant taste and aroma and - as a "secret ingredient" - salty liver.
In "Yuzhny", by the way, the fruity flavor was the soloist - due to the high content of applesauce. Its counterpart in the recipe, the Vostochny sauce, was not so bright, more restrained and more familiar. Still - a little more "soy".
The most interesting thing is that people were just "accustomed" to these sauces - they were included in the recipes of many homemade dishes. If you rummage through the old collections, you will notice that there was much more often offered in additives "Yuzhny" or "Vostochny", not "Krasnodar" or tomato paste.
The recipe, by the way, is not so complicated (you only have to salt the liver yourself), and has been surfing the Internet for a long time.
• Enzymatic sauce - 102.5 grams
• Enzymatic extraction - 36, 1 gram
• Applesauce - 153.5 grams
• Tomato paste - 30.7 grams
• Granulated sugar - 153.5 grams
• Salty liver - 51.1 grams
• Vegetable oil - 25.5 grams
• Garlic 15.3 - grams
• Dried onions 27.6 - grams
• Raisins - 61.3 grams
• Mustard (powder) - 11.2 grams
• Allspice - 0.71 grams
• Red or black pepper - 2.6 grams
• Ginger - 0.82 grams
• Cloves - 1.74 grams
• Cinnamon - 1.74 grams
• Bay leaf - 0.51 grams
• Vinegar - 306.7 grams
• Madera - 7.6 grams
• Salt - 30.7 grams
• Nutmeg - 0.51 grams
• Cardamom - 0.8 grams
Soak the raisins for a day in soy sauce, chop and grind all the ingredients, combine the ingredients and cook at 110 degrees - but there is a nuance, with increased pressure (but the cooking time and how much pressure should be increased - alas, not indicate).