Shame on my not entirely gray head! For a very long time (to be honest, literally until the day before yesterday), I was sure that "Soya-Kabul" is the soy sauce of pre-revolutionary times.
I sprinkle, again not gray, my head with the ashes of all the dishes I have ever burned, I admit: soy-kabul has nothing to do with soy sauce. I started digging up her story when I was looking for confirmation of the theory - over time, the sauces that we consider delicious began to contain much less vinegar or any other acidic ingredients.
And I came across this soy... which is not soy at all.
And after all, be a little more attentive, you would have been interested in this issue long ago. Indeed, even in Russian literature (which I am not a special connoisseur, but I periodically read something), soybean kabul is mentioned. I killed several hours looking for a phrase that was spinning in my head (for some reason she thought from “Oblomov”, it turned out - from Chekhov's “Uncle Vanya”)
- Since the professor lives here with his wife, life has got out of the loop... I sleep at the wrong time, eat different kabuli for breakfast and lunch, drink wine... all this is unhealthy! Before there was no free minute, Sonya and I worked - my compliments, but now Sonya alone works, and I sleep, eat, drink... It's not good!
Of course, the expression "I eat different kabuli" can be considered as a figurative (in the sense that I eat different delicacies), but if we assume that the kabuli were actually different?
If you want to look for the roots of a dish, it is best to first look into Dahl's dictionary. And he explains to us simply and easily:
"Soy", in Russia they called "spicy seasoning, gravy for dishes", that is a spicy gravy, not soy or soy sauce. And different kabuli could well mean different sauces ...
So maybe this is only Dahl's? No!
In the "Almanac of Gastronomes" (book 3), by Radetzky, who was the head waiter of the court of His Imperial Highness Duke Maximilian of Leuchtenberg, it is written in black and white:
- Soy, or foreign sauce, is brought from London under the names: Imperial, Queen Victoria, Regent, Prince of Welsh, Napoleonic, Royal, Wellington, Okonel, from Jamaican ginger, Valmut, Indian, own sauce, Moucheron, John-boule, Radis sauce, Mogul, fish sauce, Kabul, Brighton, Worshestersky, high-circle sauce, Hong Kong, Lager, anchovy sauce, Karatsh, Cancer, Savings, Ratafia, Garvey, turtle sauce, mushroom sauce for bivsteks, sauce for pate; the price is almost the same, i.e. from 60 k. to 1 p. per bottle.
And so the question arises, what kind of beast is this then, soybean-kabul?
Here I will again allow myself to focus on literary references. Remember that Galsworthy has a scene in which Swithin Forsyth is leading the preparations for a dinner party?
Putting out his lower lip, Swithin gave the last instructions: "Adolph, just a little bit of kabul, when you take up the ham" ...
That is, kabul is a seasoning that is appropriate to serve with ham. Let us recall English cuisine, which was still less sophisticated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and we can say with confidence - a little bit of kabul is a little bit of something spicy and spicy that levels the fat content ham. And the consistency of this bit is clearly not very liquid.
And this recipe is suitable for this.
SPICY KABUL SAUCE
Take: 200 parts of broth, 150 parts of tomato puree, 50 parts of chopped carrots, 25 parts of onions, 10 parts of red capsicum, 0.5 parts of whole English pepper, 0.5 parts of whole cloves, 200 parts of vinegar (6%).
Boil until the vegetables are completely soft, adding boiling water from time to time. Then rub through a fine sieve, boil again until a syrupy liquid is obtained
Judging by the composition, the sauce turned out to be very sour and spicy... It is easiest to define it as "inedible sour". It is unlikely that such an aristocratic dish would be to taste now.